#780: Code Unknown

(Michael Haneke, 2000)

Code Unknown is accurately titled. The movie is constructed out of a loose collection of scenes that wouldn't be that disconnected if it wasn't for the slow fades that separate them. The way Haneke constructs each scene requires the viewer to get his or her bearings in the first moments, unsure of who we are with, how it is connected to what has come before, and when we are with Juliet Binoche, if the scene is part of the movie or the movie within the movie. Films that are about how the world is big and diverse and we are all disconnected from each other often hit you over the head with their message - think Babel or Crash - like a person you already agree with yelling at you too close. Code Unknown takes another route, leaving the viewer feeling as detached from the movie as the characters within it are from each other.

I'm not a huge Haneke fan, though I haven't seen many of his most famous films like The Piano Teacher or Amour. I feel like in a lot of ways Cache is the more accessible version of this film, and I liked that one much better, though again it didn't really stay with me. He has obvious technical skill, but I find his work very cold and, like Lars von Trier, he often seems more interested in how his films make the viewer feel than in what is happening on screen. That's certainly okay, but I think there's a higher bar for provocative cinema, and I don't think Code Unknown clears it, not the least because I wasn't particularly provoked by what I was seeing. I was bored.

#797: The New Land

(Jan Troell, 1972)

The New Land picks up immediately where The Emigrants left off, yet it is a distinctly different movie. First off, it's significantly darker, with two specific sequences that are incredibly disturbing. Secondly, and more importantly, its momentum is on the decline, with a distinct backward-facing focus.

In an interview Treoll gave recently, he mentioned that there was one sequence in the book that convinced him to make the movies. It involved Ullmann's character remembering a doll she had dropped down a well in Sweden, and how the doll got more beautiful in her memory as the years went by. This sequence didn't end up in the movie after all, but he used this when developing this second movie (and during the swing scene at the beginning of The Emigrants, which is a sort of placeholder metaphor for the sequence, and one I have to think inspired Malick when he made Tree of Life and really all of his films). If The Emigrants was about beginnings and potential, The New Land is about endings and regrets. The final scene in which von Sydow is shown surrounded by his descendants in a picture just before his death will forever be etched in my memory, particularly the line about how his children no longer speak Swedish. This, to me, represents the heart of the film, the idea that all that has come before it means nothing.

The symbol Criterion chose for its cover backs this up. Here is a massive tree that has stood in Minnesota for generations, simply taken by von Sydow with a crude etching on the trunk. It is a uniquely American idea (At least in the West) and alternately inspiring and tragic. The tragedy is of course most stark in the sequence involving the American Indians who attempt to fight back against the injustice brought down on them, only to fail and be executed. But it's here in even the most innocent of encounters, like when von Sydow first meets his new neighbor.

The most noteworthy sequence in the film is surely the flashbacks to the brother's journey toward California, one of the most intense and jarring sequence I've seen from this era of filmmaking (surely Inarritu has seen this film many times). It makes you remember just how conscious of a filmmaker Troell is, something that is easy to overlook given his loose and seemingly instinctual style, but it's also simply a pleasure to watch because it's so rhythmic and visceral.

After six hours of this story, I felt genuinely sad and moved when this was over. I was a little worried about the length of this story, especially after having a mixed response to Here Is Your Life. But this is a great movie (it really should be considered one full movie, as it was sometimes shot concurrently and always intended as a full story), and one that was consistently engaging and surprising. I read one person's comment somewhere on the internet calling the film "the prequel to Fargo," and I like that characterization even though it belies the universality and scale of the film. This is a movie about the making of our country that fits nicely next to El Norte as a superior humanist depiction of the immigrant experience.

#796: The Emigrants

(Jan Troell, 1971)

The Emigrants is that rare sprawling epic that feels persistently human-scale. Despite covering thousands of miles, many characters, and countless sets and structures, the film never feels like anything more than the story of three people, a husband and wife and his brother, struggling to make a place for themselves in the world. The entire first half of the film takes place in Sweden, with the intermission hitting as they first glimpse the ship that will take them to America. Yet these early scenes never feel superfluous or slow because the characters are so vivid and the filmmaking so poetic.

Like many directors who are their own cinematographer, Troell uses his camera in a primal, instinctual fashion. His work consequently feels less refined than most directors, but his eye and talent for drawing the camera toward the most interesting thing in the field elevates this tactic and gives his work a unique feel. Despite the fact that film is an adaptation (of one of Sweden's most popular series of novels) and Troell was approached to adapt the book rather than choosing it on his own, the film always feels like it has just one hand at the helm. This approach underscores the affection for the characters, making this a movie about the experience of these people rather than just a story about specific individuals. We are emigrating along with them.

There is criticism of The Emigrants from some for painting a picture of the journey of American immigrants in the 1800s as too rosy, framed by a sentimental nostalgia. I actually agree with this characterization of the film. Yes, there are horrible deaths and crushing labor here, and certainly the experience of traveling far away from your home in awful conditions with only slight hope of making it is conveyed effectively. But even this negative experience pales in comparison to what people like this actually went through to get to America in the 1800s. An actual film about this experience would have likely been substantially darker and more explicit, something that likely wouldn't have flown in the early 70s, but more important would have made for a far different movie.

Rather than damn the film, however, I think this more lyrical approach elevates it. The Emigrants isn't meant to depict the true experience of the journey as much as the emotional and psychological effect on these characters. The delivery of this content is meant to underscore the things that are lost and gained by the family along the way. The naturalism of the scenery and Troell's technique fit with the devotion to the land and the Earth they move across. The movie isn't about learning how awful people had it in the mid 1800s, but about the potential in these leaps of faith, potential that we all know was fulfilled by subsequent generations. That the movie comes from Sweden and not the United States makes it more bittersweet - this is a generation of Swedes that saw their system broken and strove for a better life. Sweden itself would soon modernize just like the US, but these were the people who couldn't wait. In this way, The Emigrants is a story of striving, not struggling.

#782: The Apu Trilogy

 (Satyajit Ray, 1955-59)

After more than 800 spine numbers and nearly twenty years, there are few titles that can compete with The Apu Trilogy for the title of most significant achievement in the Criterion Collection. As the spectacular (but brief) documentary on the supplements explains, the three films' negatives were heavily damaged in a fire, leaving Criterion and its partners with a painstaking task of restoring the damaged film and/or reconstructing a master print from various prints sprinkled throughout the world (the process used most generally for Apur Sansar). The finished versions of the films we see on these blu-rays are absolutely stunning, especially Pather Panchali, the crown jewel of the set. This film - certainly one of the ten or fifteen most important works in cinema history - has been transformed from a barely functional relic of a forgotten era to a pristine jewel in cinema's rich history. There have been glorious transfers in Criterion's day. But it is quite clear that nothing compares to this.

But what's most amazing about the story behind these restorations is that the stature of the films themselves is equal to this remarkable product. These are living breathing artifacts of a crucial turning point in cinema, monuments to a new era yet every bit as relevant today as they were when they were released. Quite simply, if you are receptive to the average Criterion film, The Apu Trilogy will have an enormous impact on you. It's the kind of movie experience that brings to mind only a handful of comparisons that can compete with its humanism, its cinematic sophistication, and its importance to one of the five major centers of filmmaking. You owe it to yourself to watch these movies.

Links to individual reviews:

783. Pather Panchali
784. Aparajito
785. Apur Sansar

#785: Apur Sansar

(Satyajit Ray, 1959)

The final chapter of The Apu Trilogy is the most affecting. This is partially because of the commitment already put in to this character, the emotional stakes that come with four prior hours spent with a human and watching him grow from his first moments to a grown man. But the film also features the biggest gut punch of a death in an already formidable line of gut-punch deaths. Compounded by the fate of the relationship between Apu and his new son, the film's central turning point is quite overwhelming. But even as the film turns toward a poetic third act and a hopeful ending, the emotions of the thing never feel forced or manipulative. Apur Sansar is heartbreaking and uplifting. This trilogy is, like Yi Yi, the story of what encapsulates all of human experience in the era of cinema - family, modernity, art in an age of technology, love, education, belief, and most of the all the individual struggling with all of this to grasp at meaning in existence.

As the father of a boy who is about to turn five, Apur Sansar is a complex emotional ride. On the one hand, I've watched Apu's whole life - I've seen the loss that has come from being close to people, and I've seen his struggle to define himself as an individual. Through this experience, the impact of his wife's death hits so hard that it isn't a surprise that he walks away from the son he hasn't met - nor is it a move that turns me against him. Yet I know the joy and rewarding existential moments he is missing by rejecting his child. I also know the dependence of a child on their parents and the bond between a father and a son, so his logical decision is nevertheless tragic. I cried through the second half of this movie, both for Apu and for his son.

Apu says that he abandons his son because he couldn't bear to be reminded that he lived because his mother died. It goes much deeper than this, of course, back to his home village and the death of his sister, through to the moment when he had no one and nothing and decided to do something he deemed honorable in a naïve and romantic moment of foolishness. It's impossible for virtually anyone reading this post or watching this Criterion release to fully understand Apu's motivation, yet Ray has lent his life such a universal humanism that it's impossible not to relate. The final moment does not feel forced because we know this human, we know it is inevitable he will open his heart to this boy, and we root for them as they walk off into the distance even though there is almost certainly more heartbreak to be had.

#791: Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance

(Toshiya Fujita, 1974)

The main thing I kept thinking throughout Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance was how impressive Zatoichi was. Over the course of eleven years, 25 Zatoichi films were made centered around the same character and every single one of them is better than this mess of a film. The sequel pulls double duty as a study in contrasts when considering the drop in quality from the original, which looks even more impressive after replicating its tight structure and freewheeling style proved so difficult.

The film fails on multiple fronts, but the worst crime it commits is useless voiceover. The first third or so of the movie includes this vapid narration used to explain things that we mostly already know and illustrate things that were are simultaneously watching. It's awkward, lazy, and unbefitting the original film's inspired delirium. The other flaws in the film are less fatal, but leave it wounded beyond repair: the political story is admirable and interesting, but requires too much exposition to make for a good story for this character; the fight scenes are significantly less creative here, and no one in the film is much of a match for Snowblood, leaving the outcome preordained; the attempt to expand Snowblood's character beyond her simple original plan for revenge is not earned, so we're left to just assume that she would turn to the light and use her powers for justice.

There are some redeeming qualities of Lady Snowblood 2. The music stands out most - though not as focused and perfect as the theme from the original, the score here is consistently impressive and extremely reminiscent of RZA's work in Ghost Dog. Similarly, Fujita has moments of inspiration and is constantly attempting to do something with the material. There's just not enough to carry his enthusiasm in either story or performances. These sorts of forced sequels are extremely common now, but it wasn't always that way. As a spine number, then, Lady Snowblood 2 represents an early failure in this regard, and the best that can be said about it is that they didn't take the easy way out and remake the first movie - though in this case that might have been what sunk them from the beginning.

#784: Aparajito

(Satyajit Ray, 1956)

Aparajito is the middle film in the Apu Trilogy, but like Pather Panchali before it, it was not assumed there would be a follow-up. This makes the film different from the majority of second films in a trilogy, even though it also has a bit of the abrupt ending that many middle films have. One similarity it does share with such movies is the leap in technical skill on display that often come from maturity, larger budgets, and a confidence to take risks borne of success. I mentioned the talent and sophistication Ray brought to Pather Panchali in my thoughts on that film, but a small budget and the enormous challenge of doing the shoot in the village where it was set meant some things were destined to be compromised. Aparajito has significantly fewer barriers, and as a result it is a slicker and more complex film - though not necessarily a better or more important one.

The pacing of Aparajito is particularly noteworthy. The film starts out with Apu not much older than he was in the final moments of the first film, still spending his days exploring and getting into harmless trouble. However, this time it's in the streets of a well-populated town where his father has moved the family to make a better living. The first half hour or so of the film is spent establishing his new life and that of his mother's while building up the signifiers and thematic underpinnings of what is to come both in this movie and the next. (Many of these signifiers needed explanation for me, provided by the solid short special feature on the disc.)

The movie takes a dramatic shift when (spoiler etc.) Apu's father dies, and this is really where the momentum for the rest of the trilogy gets going. Apu's journey into adulthood through education and independence is a story of modernity and the toll it takes on humanity, something that comes into focus even more in the evolving relationship with trains in the third film. But it's also a humanist story of a cultural awakening in the midst of a changing society. This is the core strength of Aparajito on its own, and the film would be quite impressive separated from its beginning and ending chapters simply because it depicts this evolution so gracefully.

#793: The American Friend

(Wim Wenders, 1977)

Patricia Highsmith looms large in cinema when it comes to 20th century novelists. Her greatest contribution to the medium was Hitchcock's 1951 masterpiece Strangers on a Train, but Purple Noon (which is in the Collection) and Talented Mr Ripley are also significant works, both based on the same novel with different takes. Just last year, Todd Haynes delivered Carol, which was just hastily voted the best LGBT movie of all time in a BFI poll (the film's portrayal of lesbians stands in contrast to Strangers on a Train's homoerotic portrayal of the evil Bruno, a Freudian and outdated psychosis that mars an otherwise near-perfect film).

The American Friend is a loose adaptation of one of Highsmith's other Ripley books, one that hadn't even been published by the time Wenders bought the rights and decided to adapt it for the big screen. Unsurprisingly, Wenders did not stick to the novel closely, and The American Friend is consequently closer in style to Wenders's other films than to Highsmith's other adaptations. That said, there remains a bit of homoerotic subtext and many of the tragic undertones of ordinary people caught up in a story that propels them toward ruin that are present in most of Highsmith's work. The movie is a much richer noir tribute because of it.

Wenders makes movies that seem to exist in their own realities, a trend that culminated in his greatest film, Wings of Desire, which straddled the border between waking state and dreamworld, this life and the one after, cinema and transcendence. The American Friend is no different, though it desperately wants to belong to the long tradition of American noir and lost 60s idealism of Hopper's own films. Although Hopper was not Wenders's first choice for Ripley, he matches the tone of the film perfectly, and I don't think it would be as meaningful with a pure actor in the role. There's very little in the way of suspense here, though the two murder sequences are tautly constructed, and Wenders is instead more interested in the layering of emotional connections and the quiet descent into noir-styled fatalism. Many noir films unfurl like dreams, which has often led to surreal entries in the genre. Wenders opts for gritty and deliberate realism, which elevates the drama to mythical levels anyway.

The American Friend is most notable as a Wenders film, but it's still an excellent thriller with existential charm. It's a minor entry in his catalog that sets the stage for the recently announced Road Trilogy and likely more Wenders in the coming years. (The State of Things? Until the End of the World? There have been rumors of Buena Vista Social Club.) Hopefully that set will match the towering charms of Wings and Paris, Texas, but for now this will do as a holdover.

#787: Jellyfish Eyes

(Takashi Murakami, 2014)

Jellyfish Eyes is one of the few unique films in the collection, a pop-tribute guerrilla blockbuster that hovers between so many worlds it's almost impossible to pin down. My interest in the film overshadows my affection for it, as some of the filmmaking falls very short of the excellence typically seen in a Criterion film. Still, it's a fascinating risk on the part of Janus - and therefore Criterion - and it will be interesting to see if it pays off.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's start with the basics. Jellyfish Eyes is built out of four main influences: the Japanese kaiju tradition, pop anime like Pokemon, the family friendly blockbusters of Spielberg and Hollywood, and the high-art world of director Takashi Murakami's day job. All four are almost equally present in the film, but the most obvious to any film fan that approaches the film without any information will be the kaiju grounding of the film's structure. Although it establishes the creation of the monster in a decidedly anime fashion, melding secret society visuals with pop-spiritual mumbo jumbo, and frames the story around a child, the connections to Gojira are immediately apparent, even before the lumbering giant monster appears on the scene ready to destroy the city. The Fukashima disaster stands in for the atomic bomb, while Mr. Potato Head stands in for Godzilla, and there's a palpable sense of loss in both films, not just for an individual (in this case a dead father, an approximation of the absent father in E.T.) but for a way of life.

This kaiju connection is quite easily tied to the basic framework and visual aesthetic of the Pokemon franchise (and other similar Japanese anime and video games), which is similarly easily linked to "kids with buddies" films like E.T. (and less fantastical films like Shiloh or other kid/animal movies). The idea that Jellyfish Eyes was conceived as a live-action anime is not novel, and in fact the film was originally conceived as an animated movie before Murakami shifted to live action. Indeed, the movie cribs camera angles, sound effects, and quick cutting techniques in the action sequences almost directly from the low-rent anime he is intending to mimic. These connections are almost as obvious to even a casual viewer of the genre as the clear influence of the Pokemon creatures on the F.R.I.E.N.D.s of the story. In fact they are even more specific, considering the idea that each protagonist would have a protector or kindred spirit is a timeless archetype of literature and film, from the spirit animal of Native Americans to the patronus of the Harry Potter books.

The biggest problem with the use of this style is that, from a technical and critical perspective, it isn't especially good - particularly when incorporated into a real-life (low-budget) format. A good comparison film here is the Wachowskis' hideously underrated Speed Racer, where a similar transference from cheap Japanese anime to live-action kids movie met with success purely because they were able to pour lots and lots of money into the outcome. Without this opportunity to deliver anime-perfect compositions in a real-world playground, part of the presumed ambition of the film collapses before it can even get off the ground.

Despite this fatal flaw in the film, there's a really good argument to be made that all of this was intentional - that Murakami didn't especially care that his film was not shot well and came across as a bit stilted and underbaked. This is where the director's art career comes into play and debating the merits of the film must be done on several levels. Is Murakami as conscious and in command of his style behind the camera as he is in front of the canvas? Is the low art of Jellyfish Eyes intended to match disjointedly with the sophisticated social commentary of the film's politics? If you believe Murakami that he was indeed making a kids movie, does this negate any attempt to judge the film on a deeper level - especially if that level demands a rejection of the movie's effectiveness on its most basic surface?

These issues may have all been considered when Janus purchased the North American rights to Jellyfish Eyes, but I could just as easily see someone in the company respecting the film as an oddity impossible to deconstruct. The essay Criterion includes in its package for the film spends a great deal of time talking about Murakami as an artist, and less time evaluating the film itself. This doesn't mean that Criterion doesn't value the movie on its own, but I think it's safe to say they wouldn't have given it a second thought had Murakami not been attached. Still, its mere inclusion in the Collection demands a higher level of examination than it may get otherwise, and I do think there's a good case to be made that this isn't just a genre exercise.

Along with the tsunami references, the elements that hint that Murakami might have had something deeper and more subversive in mind here primarily stem from the iPhone-like devices each child is given when they receive their F.R.I.E.N.D. and the ominous Christian cult Saki's mother belongs to. The former is perhaps more congruent with the presumed intention of producing a movie accessible to kids, but it's impossible to let the latter slip by without pointing it out. This aspect of the story will supposedly play a bigger role in the future films, which indicates its importance in the larger story, a profile that seems totally incongruous with the family movie genre. The satire of this element is at the very least a nod to the adults dragged along to the movie, but it seems much more likely that it is just the most obvious aspect of the film that keys in viewers to the larger plan, that the movie was made more for adults who like these kinds of movies than for the kids these kinds of movies are ostensibly for.

So what to make of the devices and the religious material? After a first watch, I don't know if the themes are that compelling, and like a lot of the movie, their executions feel underbaked. Like so much of Jellyfish Eyes, the conceptual underpinning is very strong, but what ends up on screen feels a bit like some smart talented kids dicking around. The devices are not developed beyond their initial introduction, and only serve to highlight the division between Masashi and the other kids. Similarly, the church seems like the most basic of contrasts with the main conflict, and any potential social satire that might come in subsequent installments would not have much to build on here.

Of course, the one immediately appealing aspect of the film is one I have yet to discuss: Murakami's creature designs. Although the film doesn't exactly impress in the effects department, the basic designs of the creatures and their personalities are highly appealing and enjoyable. Although I am partial to Saki's Ludo-like F.R.I.E.N.D., the smaller Pokemon-style majority is also a step above most of what we see in this kind of film, and it makes the movie pretty consistently fun to look at.

Still, you can't help coming away from the movie with the idea that there wasn't anyone who knew how to make a movie in a position of power. According to many stores about the movie there were massive reworkings after an initial screening for friends was deemed incomprehensible, and I dont know that they turned it around in subsequent versions. In a lot of ways, this feels very much like an experiment from a talented artist that lacks the technical know-how to implement his vision. Most movies of this nature are seen by only a handful of people, and almost never seen by the wide and discerning audience Criterion has at their disposal. But because Murakami is not the average just-starting-out filmmaker, that circle of potential viewers expanded significantly, and the movie's reputation has suffered because of it.

There are a lot of arguments for why Criterion shouldn't have released Jellyfish Eyes, and unlike Tiny Furniture I definitely don't have a spectacular reason for dismissing all of them. As I mentioned in that post, I'm not one to argue that Criterion shouldn't release a film because they could have released other better films (though recent releases slates have me concerned for lesser-known older foreign films). That's like arguing the Academy got every Best Picture wrong because the best movie of that year wasn't even nominated - there are always amazing, better movies out there to be discovered. And I don't think every movie they release needs to be a masterpiece - only about a quarter of the films I've posted about here would I consider to be five-star masterpieces, yet I could count on both hands the films I would say don't deserve to be Criterion films with room to spare.

I do, however, think that Jellyfish Eyes feels more like a pick made out of aspiration and association. Murakami might very well turn out to be an impressive filmmaker with a uniquely odd eye for family cinema. Similarly, this might be the best chance Criterion gets to bring anime into the family, considering how difficult it is to license the best of that genre (Akira was released on Laserdisc, but will almost certainly never see the light of day on Criterion blu). These two facets of the film certainly have the potential to improve with sequels and other projects from Murakami, which makes this a bit of a bet on future returns. That's a risky proposition, and it's likely there were some detractors within the company on this choice - the film currently sits at 18% on Rotten Tomatoes (though it has just 11 reviews) - and their concerns were certainly echoed by the vast majority of Criterion fans, making this one of the most controversial releases of last year (though for my money Mister Johnson is far more unwarranted). But I think the best reason for this movie to be included in the Collection is more simple than the tangential connection to anime or high art: there's simply nothing else like it in the Collection.

#778: A Special Day

(Ettore Scola, 1977)

Don't read a goddamn thing about this movie before you see it.

A Special Day is a stunningly beautiful movie starring two stunningly beautiful people. The cover Criterion chose for the film is accurate, but it's also a bit misleading. This is not a Sirkian melodrama or a doomed romance - although in some ways it stands in for these subgenres. It's not a movie about Sofia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni - although you never forget these are the people you are watching. It's not even a sepia-toned period piece about the faded nostalgia of misremembered good old days - though again, the film's cinematography is unique and sumptuous.

This is a movie about Italy. I've mentioned briefly before the country's unwillingness to confront its complicity with Nazi Germany, but Rome, Open City was about much more than that, whereas A Special Day confronts this issue head-on. By 1977, Italy had been celebrating Liberation Day, a remarkable national agreement to present its history as a sunny lie, for 30 years. It's still intense in America in 2016 to see the six minutes that open this film in which Italy welcomes Hitler and the Nazi leadership into Rome, but to Italians in the late 70s it must have been a slap in the face. It's especially remarkable considering the fact that Scola was one of the most significant comedic filmmakers of his generation (though by this point he had turned to outright political drama) and these are arguably the two biggest stars in Italian cinema history. Yet here is a film that begins with documentary footage using contemporary broadcasts describing the jubilation upon Hitler's welcome, with little more than some credits beforehand to assure viewers they were at the right theater.

This theme is not just established at the beginning and then forgotten as the personal drama plays out - a loud radio playing the parade along with planes flying overhead keeps the pressure of the impending war pressing down on the couple throughout the film. It's hard as an American to understand what this means or would feel like to most viewers of the movie, people who were either alive during the time the film was set or were raised by people who lived their prime during the time.

The story between the two leads is radical as well, particularly Mastroianni's sexuality. There have been some objections to the couple's consummation of their relationship considering his sexual orientation, but I think the film handles it in a very moving and respectful way. The emotional connection between the two characters is earned, and even though the film often dips into melodrama, it has enough nuance and complexity to avoid falling off the deep end.

I really loved A Special Day and think this is a great choice from Criterion. Although the cast alone would be enough to make it a no-brainer in the Collection, the cinematography and vital take on the politics of Italy in both the 1930s and 1970s is what elevates it to an essential release.

#789: Burroughs: The Movie

(Howard Brookner, 1983)

Burroughs: The Movie spent nearly three decades in the wilderness, waiting to be found by director Howard Brookner's nephew 20 years after his death. This of course adds to its off-kilter central figure and the film's loose structure, giving the film more underground cred, the key to a successful portrait of Burroughs. The author was one of the great subversives in American culture in the 20th century, and Burroughs: The Movie does an admirable job of serving as a companion piece to his writing by presenting Burroughs the character.

I've never read any of Burroughs's books in full, though I have read excerpts here and there. I'm not a huge fiction prose guy, but I do respect the work that Burroughs has done and the doors he opened for other writers who were similarly interested in exploring themes and subjects that had been suppressed by the mainstream. Unlike something like Bergman Island, however, I don't think you have to appreciate the author's work to enjoy the documentary - this is a film about a person and a movement that is certainly going to be welcomed by his fans, who will get a deeper understanding of the artist here, but it's also a well-made documentary about a unique character in American intellectual history.

What struck me most about Burroughs was this status as a true character. I think there are two kinds of artists in the world: people who practically sweat their work out of their pores and walk to a different beat than the rest of us and people who work really hard to attempt to be the first kind of person. Talent doesn't really enter into either of these things. There are very talented artists who are normal people who are simply able to translate their observations and skills into beautiful timeless material, while true artists languish in obscurity because they aren't able to translate their idiosyncratic vision into meaningful work. Burroughs is quite obviously a capital A Artist, which makes watching his documentary so fascinating and why a similar work on someone like, say, Paul McCartney or Tom Wolfe would be insufferable.

Because of the quirkiness of his character, the most direct comparison in the Collection is certainly Grey Gardens. Although Burroughs is nowhere near as clueless (and mentally unstable) as the Beales, Brookner takes a Maysles-style approach to the characters, and we enter a world that seems foreign to modern mainstream society (although most of that world in this movie is already gone by the time the cameras arrive on the scene, and we hear about it only in interviews). The cover Criterion created for the edition fits in with this theme - obviously there was no other choice but to put Burroughs front and center, but the use of black and white and the close up of Burroughs in his middle America uniform makes it seem like it would fit right in as a cover for Salesman. This balance of upstanding style and dark themes was, as Luc Sante points out in the accompanying essay, central to Burroughs's success as a writer, and it makes Burroughs a fun watch and a worthy oddity in the Collection.

#790: Lady Snowblood

(Toshiya Fujita, 1973)

Fuck yeah, Criterion!

Obviously one thing Criterion does well is Samurai movies. But they are almost entirely high profile "fancy pants" samurai movies like Yojimbo or Harakiri. Lady Snowblood isn't technically a samurai movie, but it's set during the samurai era, and it is most definitively not fancy pants. This is a film in the tradition of the Blaxploitation films being made concurrently in the US and belongs to the pulpy masses of Japanese films I was initially exposed to by the Wu Tang Clan, though it is far superior to most of those films in technical quality. The film features plenty of spurting blood, an older master training the main character from birth, and a story of revenge that is uniquely Japanese but juicy enough to be at home in any country's genre tradition.

This made its inclusion in the Collection a bit odd to some, since this area of film history is usually covered by genre labels that do a great job with similar movies. But Criterion has never shied away from cult films, whether it's as early as Carnival of Souls or as recent as House. The quality of this film probably falls somewhere in the middle of those two movies, but while I was expecting a fun, tightly constructed thriller from this movie, I didn't expect it to be nearly as freewheeling when it came to filmmaking as it was. There are plenty of stylistic touches here that make the film that much more fun to watch - the photo montages, the freeze frames, the comic, the evocative cuts and poetic framing. The director, Toshiya Fujita, was actually best-known for his films about young people (he also made sex films at Nikkatsu), and these are the only films in this action style that he made. His style is particularly impressive given the film's low budget.

The last thing to mention about Lady Snowblood is the music. "Shura No Hana" is the theme song over the title credits (sung by Lady Snowblood herself), and it's just an incredible pop song. The music throughout the film is excellent, and it ups the film's production value considerably. I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel.

Finally, it's virtually impossible at this point to talk about Lady Snowblood and not mention Tarantino's Kill Bill, which was not so much a remake of the film as it was deeply inspired by it. Like Lady Snowblood, Uma Thurman's character is out for revenge, which is accomplished in a series of battles with the people who wronged her. Tarantino took a lot from the film's style as well, from the use of different mediums and a pop soundtrack to the cartoonish violence and chapter headings. He even overtly acknowledges his source material by including the theme song in the film. But only someone intending to dismiss Tarantino would declare Kill Bill merely a ripoff. As in Tarantino's other films (many of which have similarly borrowed concepts or plotlines), the director brings his own storytelling style and post-modern sensibility to the film. This allows anyone watching either movie to enjoy it on its own terms, and I noted the similarities between Snowblood and Kill Bill, which I saw first, only as a fun connection while watching this film, like hearing a song that RZA had sampled for a classic Wu Tang song.

#798: Death By Hanging

(Nagisa Oshima, 1968)

When it is released next year, Oshima's Death by Hanging will join an Eclipse set and three main line titles, In the Realm of the Senses, Empire of Passion, and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, in the Collection. Interestingly, the director's two most generally well-regarded films, The Ceremony and Boy, are available on Criterion's Hulu page but remain unreleased on disc. Although there is an obvious excuse for this, which is that it's likely this film was simply ready for blu-release before those two films, Death By Hanging also represents a drastic departure from his films already in the mainline collection, making it a valuable additional facet of Oshima's oeuvre.

What's most interesting about Death By Hanging is its tone, which swerves from straight-faced documentary to vicious satire to broad farce to biting social commentary, finally settling on a haunting ending that implicates the viewer in the crimes of the film. This wide range might initially feel like it's drowning the film in metastructure. It's worth noting that every review I could find on the film (including ones by Donald Richie and Vincent Canby, both of whom gave the film a slightly negative review) mentions Godard. In fact, Richie's first sentence is a direct comparison between Oshima's role in Japanese cinema and Godard's similar role in France. This connection is significantly less likely to be noticed when viewing Oshima's later films already in the collection, while the tone, overt politics, and surreal structure of Death By Hanging makes the comparison almost obligatory.

Despite its complexity as both a narrative and a political statement, the movie can be roughly divided into two sections. The first focuses on the crime and punishment expected by the title of the film. The convicted murderer, named simply R, is set to be executed, but the hanging does not go as planned and he survives. Oshima uses a documentary style as he leads up to the execution, mimicking the supposed removed and somber role the state plays in implementing the death penalty. This makes the failure of the execution stand out and gives the swing toward chaos even greater heft: when we switch from documentary to farce, it's as if the whole movie - and therefore the world it depicts - has fallen apart. The scenes where the men argue over what to do in order to avoid trouble (they seem less concerned with the right thing to do) are often laugh-out-loud funny, and this stretch of the movie plants a flag firmly in the dark comedy camp.

But once the deeper reenactments begin, as the men attempt to reconnect R with his past to get him to acknowledge his crimes, the film takes its tongue out of its cheek and begins to tear down more than just the question of whether or not the state should kill a person. Much as it would be impossible to ignore the relationship between black people and the American death penalty, Oshima confronts the larger issue of race in Japan, weaving in R's experience as a Korean raised in Japan. This second half is not as tightly plotted as the first - and it often suffers from dated intellectual signposts like Freud and Brecht, two other figures inevitably cited in reviews of the film - but it opens up Oshima's statement and in many ways makes the film harder to ignore.

There have been countless films against the death penalty over the years, just as there were countless intellectual films in the 60s that flirted with radical structure and politics. The value in Oshima's film is its willingness to go where the material takes it and avoid settling into an easy opposition to the status quo. For me, this makes Oshima less of a parallel Godard and more of a clear compatriot of Masaki Kobayashi and Kaneto Shindo, a rebel even among these iconoclastic legends. Godard's form certainly began to be tied directly to his politics, especially from Pierrot Le Fou on, but Oshima's form was from his very first film inseparable from his politics. Although he never lacked for technical skill, none of Oshima's work seems to love movies the way Godard's early films do. He is intently focused on what is on screen, using cinema as a tool rather than an art itself. Death By Hanging makes this relationship clearer than Oshima's later films, and it's what makes the movie both an admirable condemnation of state-sponsored murder and a vital addition to Oshima's Criterion films.

#783: Pather Panchali

(Satyajit Ray, 1955)

I watched Pather Panchali a few years ago in a version that was so bad that I decided to wait for the restoration to watch the next two films in the series. The quality of the film's image - which was worse than many budget restorations of silent films I have seen - was so bad that it was difficult to get into the story even. So when I blind bought the trilogy at the most recent B&N 50% sale, I decided I had to rewatch Pather to get the full effect. I was absolutely right - this viewing was a revelation of the kind you rarely get, and Pather Panchali is certainly one of the great films of cinema.

Pather Panchali begins before its supposed protagonist is born, and in many ways the film is a passing of the torch from one Ray child, the sister who steals fruit from an orchard that once belonged to her family, to another, Apu, a young boy whose watchful eye and innocent perspective are a stand-in for that of the viewer's own lens. Although my own children are younger than this pair and reversed in gender order, the relationship is immediately recognizable, comprising both battle-weary enemies and siblings with an unbreakable bond of love. The sad deaths that consume the final third of the film are of the gut-wrenching variety, though the simple poetic framing of Ray's camera gives us the big picture and never lets us forget the larger story at work.

The fact that Ray didn't initially plan on making the other two films in the trilogy lend the final moments an ambivalence that the knowledge of subsequent films has replaced with hope and a sense of beginnings. Apu only knew this world for a short time and it will be difficult for him to recall many of the things that shaped him. As a complete story, however, the film's structure shifts away from establishing details to a portrait of a family struggling to free themselves from poverty. Until Apu finds the necklace, the true protagonist of the film is the mother, desperate to transcend the shame her daughter and husband have brought upon her and struggling to make a life in difficult circumstances. She is a remarkable character only because Ray chooses to make her remarkable, and it lends the film its humanist qualities, a trait that defined world cinema post-Rome, Open City and pre-Breathless.

But even in the context of a thriving international film community, Pather Panchali is striking. The movie stands out immediately just by nature of its subject matter, swimming in a wave of European and Japanese films that crashed into American arthouse theaters in the 50s. But the film distinguishes itself actively rather than through its mere existence. Perhaps the two things that stand out most to me are the sophistication of Ray's technique and the intimacy of his depiction of rural India. Although they are linked, it is worth addressing each separately.

Ray's technical proficiency was by no means predestined. Though he came from a distinguished family with a tradition of artists, he had never made a film when he began work on Pather Panchali, using his own money in initial shooting. The fact that India was almost non-existent on the international film scene further underscores the uphill battle Ray faced. Although Indian cinema began producing neorealist work after independence, Ray's film was the first to generate any notable attention in the West, meaning he no roadmap for this kind of success (which is not to imply he was expecting it or crafting the film with this in mind). His crew had little experience, his actors were mainly amateurs, and his funding meant that many techniques and multiple takes were often unavailable. Still, the film manages to deliver a style that was both elementary and intellectual. The way Ray blocks his characters and the moments he chooses to move the camera have rarely been improved upon in the ensuing 60 years. Many of his shots in the fields and the forest are stunning displays of black and white cinematography. I was particularly struck by his balance of Japanese formalism, often with minimal cinematic flourishes when in intimate household moments with the family, and Western naturalism, both in his scenic shots and in the way that the village sinks into the forest and water around it. The camera is both the documentarian and poet

Ray was famously inspired by Bicycle Thieves to make movies, and this is clear in his depiction of the family's struggles in his debut film. Yet the jump for De Sica from his stature in Italian society (he was raised in poverty in Lazio outside of Rome) to the world of Antonio and his son in Bicycle Thieves is not hard to contemplate. Although it was certainly impossible for Ray to ignore poverty in his own country, the jump from his own bubble to the world of Apu is extraordinary. That Ray was able to enter this world without presenting it as "separate" from that of the viewer is even more impressive. Part of this is the proximity of such living conditions - Ray only needed to go a few miles outside of the city to shoot Pather Panchali, something that would be difficult to achieve in Europe or America. But most of it stems from his gentle hand with the camera and his dedication to the universality of his characters' struggle. Pather Panchali is not about a poor Indian family any more than Home Alone is about the difficulties of life in the wealthy Chicago suburbs. Yes, this is a world very different from our own (and from Ray's), but it is also about people who love, work, gossip, mourn. They are petty or angry sometimes and elated and entertained others. The way Ray reserves judgement allows us to see these emotions through their eyes instead of through our own or Ray's. When Apu goes to see the train, we begin to feel what it must have been like to see a train for the very first time anywhere in the world, what power and beauty one could experience with the revelation of industry. It frees the moment from a contrast in societies and allows it to simply stand. It's consequently one of the great scenes I've ever seen.

I won't be watching these in close viewings - I've decided to space them out over a few weeks to give each film time to breathe. But I am certainly looking forward to the next two films, and I remain grateful that Criterion and its partners put so much love into the finished product. Pather Panchali's place in history can be hard to overstate and seeing it look this beautiful reminds even the most jaded cineaste that there are still treasures to be uncovered and rediscovered.

#788: Speedy

(Ted Wilde, 1928)

I've long been a staunch defender of Buster Keaton as the grandmaster of silent comedy over the sentimental and dated Chaplin. But here comes Harold Lloyd, the wild card exploding the idea of any binary perspective on an era's worth of the medium's humor. Lloyd is every bit as funny as the two more famous stars - as modern and clever as Keaton and as likable and charismatic as Chaplin. Perhaps because he didn't direct his own films the actor never got the recognition he deserved in the auteur age, but hopefully these Criterion releases will help spur a reevaluation of his work.

After Safety Last and The Freshman, two classics that deserve to be placed alongside the great comedies of any era, Speedy seems slight in comparison. But that doesn't take away from its energy or sheer entertainment value. The film revolves around a timeless comedic conflict - an old man's outdated business (in this case a horse-drawn trolley in New York) is trying to be gobbled up by a greedy corrupt businessman who wants to create a conglomeration to make even more money. Lloyd is charged with getting the man the compensation he deserves, mainly because he wants to marry the man's granddaughter. Hilarity (and suspense) expectedly ensue.

Along the way, the film occasionally descends into a strong of bits, most notably when the couple takes a largely unnecessary jaunt to Coney Island. Yet even in this stretch there are moments of incredible comedic sophistication. The most notable for me was the sequence in which Lloyd eats more than it seems like he really should. The film cuts to Lloyd's back and we see he is bent over and heaving, presumably from vomiting, while his fiance comforts him. Just as it seems like the shot is going on too long the camera pans back to reveal Lloyd has been blowing into a hose that tests his lungs at the carnival. There's another later bit that uses viewer obstruction involving a dog's tail - both times it's as surprising as it is funny, a masterful use of the young medium. It's also worth noting the cameo of Babe Ruth, a reminder that celebrity appearances in comedies are not a new trend and further cementing the film's appeal as a forward-looking comedy trying to deliver fresh ideas as much as it wants to make you laugh.

The other star of the film is of course New York City, and this might be what makes Speedy so special. We get a number of great looks at the Big Apple of 1928, but the most sustained exhibit is the final horse race through the streets. Lloyd rushes by the public library, slams into an elevated train post, and rushes under the Washington Square Arch and by the fountain. 1928 was the thick of change for the city, when cars were completely taking over and the Depression had yet to wreak havoc. It's a city that doesn't feel so different from the one now, albeit with more independent craft stores (including a nice stereotypical Chinese laundry owner!) and subways running overhead. It's even more thrilling than the city depicted in Lonesome, and Speedy's slick technique and artful comedy weave in and out of the city so effortlessly that the whole film buzzes with the energy of the city. I wouldn't go so far as to call Speedy a classic - its structure isn't as elegant as the other Lloyd films in the Collection - but it is a must-see for fans of silent comedy and New Yorkers interested in the city's past.