#804: A Brighter Summer Day

(Edward Yang, 1991)

"You can't even tell real from fake. How can you make movies?"

Art is objects made to look like symbols, or perhaps the other way around. Ceci n'est pas une pipe. In cinema, this takes the form of actors and sets and music and title cards, but the most interesting thing in film has always been the illusion of fantasy made real; the rudimentary science fiction of A Trip to the Moon; the Depression-fighting glamour of The Thin Man; the television-fighting Christian epics of The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur; the current kid-fantasy comic book deluge. All of these genres are wildly different and intended for different audiences. But they represent the history of cinema as an artform primarily concerned with the artificial and imagined conceits of society turned literal on screen.

The real and the fake constantly bleed together in Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day, his four-hour masterwork finally available in the US on home video (or any kind of wide release) after 25 years of bad bootlegs and fleeting repertory screenings. The blurring starts at the top. Taiwan itself is a simulacrum of China, a "republic" in exile, convinced that it will return to claim its country. The generation that lost China's civil war, represented as parents in the film, dreams of  retaking the mainland, yet seems more intent on displaying to themselves their readiness than actually delivering on it - a false show of force rather than the implementation of it.

The implications of this myth - and the dependence upon it - are all around the characters of the film, despite the fact that the movie's core story is not overtly political. S'ir's family lives in a house formerly occupied by the Japanese, a constant reminder that Taiwan is a nation in flux and without the ever-present history of their former country. Tanks roll down the street to nowhere in particular. The night school S'ir is demoted to uses military-style uniforms that mask the ganglife reality of its students (a layer of deceit later extended by Honey's return, where he wears a military uniform to avoid the police).

Within this context, it's no wonder that S'ir and his classmates would turn to American culture, a worldview created by the children of immigrants in a land where tradition is constantly erased. Elvis's disciples in the film, particularly Cat, present renditions of his work that are difficult to visually reconcile: young Chinese men and boys singing like, posturing like, hoping to move like American rock-and-rollers. Cat, subtly one of the most important characters in the movie, does not understand the words but uses phonetic translations of the music to recreate nearly perfect renditions. Is it "a brighter summer day" that Elvis sings, S'ir's sister wonders? The film's English title, it seems, could itself crumble under closer scrutiny.

S'ir and Ming are the false lovers at the center of this story of misunderstood run-ins and quiet injustices. The relationship is built out of imagined connections, mainly because Ming is so obtuse that she allows any boy (or man, in the case of the doctor) to ascribe to her whichever need they have the urge to satisfy. In the case of S'ir, this plays out as the role of protector. Ming's early acquiescence to this dynamic illustrates the typical peril women face in innocent games; what is taken as flirtation and innocence by S'ir is actually Ming's defense against the already typical pull men feel toward her. In Ming's shoes, their interactions are superficially meaningful. She is drawn to S'ir because she thinks he doesn't want precisely what her attention is stirring within him. Look at the final crime that brings their dalliances to a final tragedy: S'ir does not intend to stab her until the very moment he does it. This crime of passion was originally (presumably) intended for Ma (whose own power over Ming by employing her mother casts further tragic light on the girl's facility for choice outside the intentions men place on her). Even this most-real moment is something far different than it looks. As S'ir stands over Ming's body, with the surrounding shoppers as oblivious to what has just happened as they are to the world of teenage games that we've lived with for nearly four hours, he looks down and screams at her that she is not dead. It's hope for reality to pull him out of his nightmare despite the fact that we know it's the other way around.

This final moment couldn't have come without the interrogation S'ir's father experiences. In the most jarring narrative shift in the film, Yang cuts from the white-knuckled terror of the pool hall massacre to the White Terror of Taiwan's purging of suspected Communist sympathizers. This rug pull is addressed in the essay accompanying the Criterion release, though Rayns seems to take it at face value. It doesn't seem like a coincidence that Yang timed the massacre for the halfway point of his epic, nor does it seem surprising that he would follow it with the rest of S'ir's world crumbling around him; this film is a symmetrical arc with a second half that descends into emotional chaos for father and son alike. But the fact that Yang chooses to avoid any of the immediate aftermath of the massacre is the mark of a true storyteller. Like, Ozu, Hitchcock, or Resnais, Yang knows when his viewer can make a narrative jump more elegantly than the average filmmaker does. And here, too, the film's reality bumps up against artifice.

S'ir's father is of course a good citizen of the Republic of China. Though he's taken the same kind of hit most middle class former Chinese men have in the move to Taiwan, there's no indication in the film that he regrets his decision. We even meet a woman whose husband opted out, returning to Mao's China in the 50s to attempt to open up the country during the Hundred Flowers Campaign. This is also why Zhang is interrogated, of course. He happened to be friends with the wrong people, who are really just the people that anyone would know in a messy separation like that of the Communist revolution (mirroring the lower stakes HUAC era in the States). Zhang is a true citizen of Taiwan's Chinese government, yet fear of Communism has turned citizens into spies. Zhang's friend Wang talks a big game, but it's not clear if he is able to back up this posturing; S'ir's mother wonders aloud to her husband if he wasn't behind the kidnapping himself. The ultimate façade crumbles as Zhang is pulled from his interrogation room to glance in on another interrogation - just like his own - taking place in the next room over. It's an assembly line of false confessions, designed to blur the line between truth and fiction and serve up a generation of traitors to excuse the sorry state of the resistance, long since exiled to a tropical island.

As the film's devices extend into metaphor, so too does the push and pull between real and fake. The most overt example of this is the flashlight, a wonderful display of Yang's deliberate plotting and delicate hand with symbolism. S'ir steals the flashlight in the early moments of the film from the movie studio that sits next to his school. From there it winds its way through the plot as doggedly as S'ir himself, almost immediately playing a key role in illuminating Sly's makeout session, but then bleeding into events at school, encounters with Ming, and perhaps most notably in the chilling massacre S'ir is witness to at the pool hall. In the commentary included with the film, Rayns posits that S'ir initially intends to steal the flashlight simply to read in his bed. But this seems far-sighted for a clearly impulsive kid like S'ir, who likely just grabbed the first thing of value on the guard's desk when he was unattended to. Still, the ways in which S'ir (and others) use the flashlight are often childlike and innocent, even when what it reveals is more sinister. S'ir returns the flashlight (where he says the line at the beginning of this post) just before his final act; he's put away childish things and turned toward his fate.

Flashlights are frequently metaphors for truth, shining a light on what was dark. Yet their light is artificial, cutting through the natural darkness to glare at things that were meant to be hidden. The pool hall massacre takes place in the dark because the Taiwanese government is unable (or more likely unwilling) to keep the lights on. S'ir's flashlight cuts through this darkness to reveal the truth hidden by his government. As the tanks roll by, Ming turns the light on and off, bouncing the fake beams off the giant machines lumbering through their world. A war has become a game (just as the doctor accuses Ming of turning love into a game), and the normalization of violence persists. The flashlight's origin in the movie studio extends the metaphor: this light is from a temple of light, a place where without exposure there is nothing. The coincidence of the flashlight motif and the concept of a brighter summer day no longer seems so coincidental.

Yang's basic premise for A Brighter Summer Day, using a real-life tabloid murder from his childhood to construct a wholly fictionalized narrative about his and his father's generation, is filled with potential for exploring the battle between real and fake. Of course, the very nature of cinema, referenced literally in the studio subplot of the film and in the quotation at the beginning of this post, is ripe for examination of the duality - the technical process of individual frames implying motion is just as much of an illusion as the developed method of storytelling within the medium (editing, set design, acting, post manipulation, etc.). Yet there are many conscious and unconscious layers of narrative piled on top of reality. The film's Chinese title is "The Murder Incident of the Boy on Guling Street," yet the boy is not the boy (his used name in the film is not his "real" name in the movie - yet his "real" name is the real name of the actor who plays him, just as his fake father is played by his real father) and the street is not Guling street, but rather an elaborate set constructed for the film. Real-life events are either inserted into the film to anchor the fictional story to history (the Nixon/Kennedy election) or altered to fit the narrative's momentum (the massacre that serves as its turning point is loosely based on a real-life crime that occurred years after the film is set).

The concept can be extended to Yang's directorial style, one that was in line with many of his peers in New Taiwan Cinema. Long takes, amateur actors, and stories that detail the real lives and political context of everyday life are all devices frequently used to eliminate the "lies" of cutting, method acting, or wish-fulfillment and/or pure entertainment in mainstream films. This was not necessarily the conscious intention of these filmmakers, many of whom took their influences directly from previous titans like Ozu, whose frames within frames are on full display here, and Herzog, who showed Yang that film can be deeply personal and need not conform to commercial standards. But they nevertheless reject both Hollywood and what the filmmakers were seeing within their own industry, where romance pictures and war propaganda were being churned out by a tired studio system out of touch with the realities of second- and third-generation life in Taiwan.

The real/fake relationship can be felt everywhere in the film, both literally and metaphorically. The implications of this dichotomy, pulled throughout the film's mammoth running time, are less straightforward. What does this continual process of illuminating obscured truths say about the world Yang wants to depict? Rayns mentions on the commentary that Taiwan's history was tightly controlled through the first thirty years of its history under Chinese rule, to the point where huge massacres like the one that inspired the pool hall incident were not even covered in the paper. So perhaps Yang's intentions were political, a statement about the struggle of Taiwanese 2nd and 3rd generation children to decode their past. Told lies and half-truths for so long, it would seem cathartic to experience a film like A Brighter Summer Day. This political slant ties nicely into the rest of the New Taiwan Cinema movement, where films shed light on similarly papered-over but significant events like the February 28 Incident where thousands of native Taiwanese were massacred by the Chinese government.

However, I think Yang's intentions were much more personal, and therefore universal. At the end of his brilliant commentary, which, as would indicate its impressive scale, I've already referenced quite a bit, Tony Rayns says that he believes the film is about both father and son and their inability to reconcile their own personal system of beliefs with that of the authoritarian state under which they live. This is as good an explanation of the film's larger purpose as any that I have heard or read, but I'll offer one more.

A Brighter Summer Day seems to be not so much about the individual versus a social or political structure as it is about the fundamental nature of identity - "who am I?" not "how can I be myself?" The rocky path father and son find themselves on is not laid exclusively by the powers that be, but partially by their own doing. One of the key moments in the film is Zhang telling S'ir "if a person will apologize for the things he didn't do, he is capable of anything." This is directly relevant to the situation both find themselves in, where the father is accused of sympathies he does not harbor and the son is associated with the gangs to which he does not belong. But it's also indicative of their internal struggle to make a place in the world. Yang once said that the film was made to address the unspoken choice Taiwan must eventually make, to declare independence or reintegrate into China. Either approach is an acceptance of defeat, and for me this is why the film is not so much about the destruction of the individual as it is about the struggle for a moral and certain dignity within any state, though particularly an oppressive one.

In this regard, both men have fought a losing battle by the second half of the film. Zhang is a shadow of his former self walking home from his son's former school, recreating the scene from earlier where he laid down his stand against false confession. As Rayns notes, S'ir himself is pushed out of the film by the camera, depicted either outside the frame or with his back to us for the final stretch. This is not the oppression of the state - we've seen that come down on him for the first three hours of the film -  but the elimination of identity, his final chance for redemption pushed aside with him. The movie opens with S'ir's fate being discussed by other people as he sits outside. The value of education in the world of the film makes clear the role the radio broadcasts of graduating students play in the film's bookends: this is tragedy of lost potential, of sacrifices made that were never redeemed. Of course, virtually none of the children we've met during the film will be included in any broadcast like the ones we hear, so there are certainly social implications here, the idea of a lost generation. But the continuation of the Zhang family's household chores (and the absence of the men) in the final moments points toward a more personal tragedy. S'ir's cinematic dissolution is a democratic call to Yang's generation, and a tribute to the failed struggle of his father's. These are statements with far-reaching political implications, but they apply first to the individual.

Many people have talked about the novelistic qualities of A Brighter Summer Day; the detail in the setting and plotting; the huge number of speaking parts; the many threads of story that are intertwined so tightly that the running time could not be reduced without sacrificing key moments, a rare case of a four-hour film without any fat. In the modern era, this is most reminiscent of the praise surrounding The Wire, David Simon's five-season examination of the American City at the turn of the 21st century. I am not the first to compare this film to The Wire (on the day of the blu-ray release, Tony Zhou of Every Frame a Painting made an illuminating comparison chart of gang names on Twitter) but I do so here because the theme of the individual within a system, as A Brighter Summer Day also alludes to, was at the heart of that show's run. But where the two works part ways is on the issues of identity that I think are so vital to the purpose of this movie.

Unlike the father and son of A Brighter Summer Day, the characters of The Wire were unapologetic about who they were. McNulty, the central character of the series, is almost wholly driven by his inability to play by the rules, yet the small amount of impact the wire has on both the drug system and/or policing in Baltimore comes directly from the supreme confidence in his own nature. In fact, attempting to pretend your identity can be altered is often punished. Many of the most significant deaths in The Wire  - Wallace, Omar, Stringer - come when the character attempts to change and get out of "the Game." But their deaths do not come from the system, they come from their own conscious choices to drift back into their old habits, their true identities. There are of course exceptions to the rule; Bubbles and Pryzbylewski have significant character arcs in the show where their identity becomes an awakening. But these exceptions are intentional, and point to the insidious nature of the system, where expectation of even the most revolutionary individuals (McNulty, Marlo, Carcetti) is baked in.

Ultimately, The Wire is a cynical show, not about human nature but about the economic and political structures humans have created. People are people in The Wire, not good, not bad, but flawed and resilient. Partially because it's set in the past, A Brighter Summer Day is something else entirely. The individuals in the film have long since passed the point of change, but it's not too late for the 90s. The movie's events seem so detailed and familiar that they must be real. But they are not. They are constructed around a false memory and lost identity that does not need to be fate and the individual alone can transcend. Yang is telling the viewer that honesty can change Taiwan.

The comparison still continues to hold water because the superficial comparisons are also apparent - a portrait of society as told through its young gangs, storylines we enter midway with a narrative uninterested in providing exposition to ground the viewer, sprawling casts with fully realized biographies just offscreen. It's these elements that in many ways make the two works so appealing (and so seemingly authentic) to such a wide number of people, despite the fact that they never make any attempt to adjust people to lives of the characters - they simply are, and in so being, we recognize humanity. But these similarities - the ones that make them still so popular and vital to outsiders - belie the individuality of each work. These complex, richly symbolic narratives thrive on their dedication to the truth of their characters and the hyper-local world that surrounds them. Unsurprisingly, A Brighter Summer Day was embraced by the Taiwanese youth on its release, just as The Wire found favor with inner-city drug dealers in the 2000s. Specificity and detail go a long way toward tearing down the barriers between real and fake.

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The basic premise of this blog (which was never expected to last long enough to need to stick to any sort of premise) is to record my thoughts immediately after my viewing of a film without any additions or editing beyond typos in a second pass-through (many don't even get this low level of editing as you may have noticed). I've broken this rule a handful of times, usually with something like Last Year at Marienbad or Shoah that affected me a great deal but required more reflection to translate my feelings into words (though both went largely unedited - I just took my time writing them). A Brighter Summer Day is so complex and thought out that both approaches seem unworthy of the movie, which is what prompted me to write what I have written here after seeing the film a second time with commentary and watching some of the extras, not to mention spending a few weeks sitting with it. While I don't consider the observations I've made here to be the final word on the meaning behind the film, I haven't seen this aspect of the movie explored yet, and I think it's an approach to the sprawling story told here that helps illuminate the psychology behind both this film and Taiwanese cinema in general. Any movie with such a rich tapestry of characters, plotlines, and consciously implemented symbols (the radio, the flashlight, the baseball bat, the use of knives and swords, basketball, Elvis, etc.) leaves room for many interpretations. But this is a particularly impressive feat here because Yang's execution is so detailed and both time- and place-specific.

I don't think any of us fully comprehend the impact this film will have in the coming decades now that it is widely available, not just to an American audience, but to international viewers (including those in China) who are willing to import it. Although Yang is not doing anything particularly revolutionary with his camera work or story structure, the complexity and depth of his achievement here unlock the door to cinematic perfection through brute force. Furthermore, his dedication to the world he constructed and his insistence on the specific without concern for internationally familiar context should serve as an inspiring roadmap for developing cinema all over the world. In the last Sight and Sound poll, A Brighter Summer Day ranked #84 overall and placed behind only In the Mood For Love in terms of Chinese films. I expect to see it grow in estimation with its newfound exposure, similar to the current #1 film (and long my go-to choice for my own personal favorite movie), Vertigo, which was also "lost" for decades. In fact, I expect to see this movie in the top ten by the 2032 poll. It's that good, that massive.

One final thing - I don't particularly care to compare the film to Yi Yi, Yang's more successful (internationally) and widely available final film, because they are very different works and are intended to reach the viewer in different capacities. That later movie had a deep emotional impact on me and it continues to be a personal favorite. A Brighter Summer Day is the more important film, however, and this Criterion release will cement its reputation as Yang's masterpiece. As this post likely implies to the reader, I'm perfectly fine with the distinction.

#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

#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.

#766: Here Is Your Life

(Jan Troell, 1966)

How you respond to Here Is Your Life will largely depend on how much you believe film should reflect the natural rhythms of reality. As a conventional piece of cinematic storytelling, Here Is Your Life is a crushing bore. But that's primarily because the film is more interested in the simple and identifiable (not through other cinema but through IRL) experiences of growing up, struggling to find a calling, and awakening to the responsibilities and conflicts of adulthood. It's a pretty fascinating approach considering the film was the debut feature from its director.

The two Criterions that came to mind while watching the film are extremely different, but get at the respective flaws and strengths here. Berlin Alexanderplatz is another direct adaptation of a novel that features a great deal of internal dialog that is lost in translation, resulting in an aimless and undistinguished plot. It's very easy for nothing to happen in a book because the prose and characters' internal thoughts can make anything interesting if done well enough. In film, the routine and unremarkable nature of everyday life becomes excruciatingly dull. Though Here Is Your Life is thankfully one fifth the running time of Berlin, it still drags on for a difficult three hours that will be brutal for any but the most dedicated of slow cinema fans. The beautiful imagery (especially in the opening logging sequence) can go a long way, but at a certain point the returns on the investment of time become negligible.

The other film that Here Is Your Life reminded me of is I Am Curious (Yellow), one of the worst films in the Collection. Made a year after this infinitely superior film, I Am Curious (Yellow) followed a similar coming of age political and sexual awakening, though the later film gained notoriety because it was about a(n occasionally naked) woman, while this film languished in obscurity until Criterion released it last year. Both movies however represent a conscious cinematic jump from earlier Swedish film, though Here Is Your Life does so in a more subtle and appealing way.

I wish I liked Here Is Your Life more than I did and can certainly respect viewers who are blown away by the film's leisurely pace and quiet confidence. I actually quite liked Everlasting Moments, the first Troell film in the Collection that snuck in thanks to the IFC deal, and I'm very much looking forward to The Emigrants. But Here Is Your Life felt more like a movie to be endured than an epic to savor.

#765: The Black Stallion

(Carroll Ballard, 1979)

The Black Stallion seems like a surprising choice for Criterion on paper. Made in the late 70s by Coppola's short-lived studio and a little-known (but underrated) director, the film is a fairy tale for the 8-12 set. Yet even a cursory viewing makes it clear why this release has a wacky C in the corner of its cover: this is a serious work of cinema, and one of the most beautiful films in the collection.

The story of The Black Stallion is divided into two halves, and while the protagonist of the film is a young boy, the stars of their respective halves are the stallion himself and Mickey Rooney as the trainer. The first half, which opens on a ship off the coast of Africa before a shipwreck leaves the young boy alone on an island with the horse, features a powerful story from the boy's father, a terrifying disaster sequence, and finally a mostly wordless sequence on the beach where the boy and the horse become inseparable. This sequence is obviously the great challenge of the film, and Ballard and his cinematographer, Caleb Deschanel (Zooey's and Emily's father), rise to the occasion. Although two scenes jump as particularly memorable - the horse saving Alec from a snake and Alec finally mounting the horse - it's the rest of the action that is most impressive because they manage to make small moments and stunning scenery engrossing without a flashy style.

The second half of the film turns into a more typical underdog sports film, which makes it less appealing. It's saved from cliche by Rooney's performance and Ballard's determination to do things different and take his time with the characters. The drama is focused intently on Alec and his horse, leaving little room for the typical melodrama that we're accustomed to in this sort of movie. Furthermore, the visuals stay beautiful and inventive - I love the way the final race is shot and edited, moving back and forth from long side shots where Black appears to be gliding through space and over the shoulder shots moving at breakneck speed with thundering hooves underneath. I'm glad I got to see this on blu-ray, as Criterion's transfer is absolutely stunning, particularly in moments of quick movement like the final race (though I love the colors of the film throughout). There's not much in the way of suspense or significant insight in these final scenes of the film, but the gentle way the story has been told leaves the viewer satisfied anyway.

It doesn't take more than a quick glance at Ballard's IMDB page to see that his career has been a challenging one. With just six films spread over four decades, Ballard saw little commercial success and paid the price with irregular work and a pigeonholing of his talents as a children's movie director with an emphasis on animal stories. The interview Scott Foundas does with Ballard on the Criterion disc is interesting and informative, but Ballard definitely comes off as a little bitter about the way his career went. The three child/animal films that make up half of his feature output (this, Fly Away Home, and Duma) are all superior kids films that depict relationships with animals that are virtually the exact opposite of the anthropomorphic creatures that make up today's "family" film landscape. Ballard treats Duma and Black with a dignity and respect in their films that is the equal of his treatment of his young viewers - these are not movies meant to condescend or cater to adolescents, but are instead challenging, mystical, and wondrous depictions of youth and man's place in nature. This is not an easy thing to do and it is not encouraged in today's family landscape, where movies need to appeal to viewers from 5 to 95. It's what makes Ballard's films so valuable. The Black Stallion is a particularly beautiful example in this regard.

#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.

#695: Blue Is the Warmest Color

(Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)

I am not a lesbian. This is probably obvious to anyone who has read this blog before, but it's worth noting here because it's especially essential to understanding where I'm coming from in this response to Blue Is the Warmest Color, one of the more fascinating, controversial, and enigmatic recent entries into the Criterion Collection.

By its very nature, film is an interaction with the Other, most literally with the past, but often with different cultures, locations, people, realities. It might seem like a (kind of) lesbian love story should be no different than a Japanese domestic drama or a Swedish medieval parable - as a white straight American male, there is always the risk of translating the themes and politics of a film poorly, of valuing its "otherness" as a fetishized progressive ideal instead of meeting its humanity head-on with balanced perspective.

Yet some films are especially hard to evaluate, even for viewers who identify as belonging to the world the film is attempting to depict. Blue Is the Warmest Color has an unfair weight placed on it simply because there are so few films with which to compare it. The number of lesbian love stories in mainstream cinema in any country is almost criminally small, while the number of those films which attempt to depict sexuality in explicit and authentic terms is, well, seemingly non-existent. When something like this happens, there's nowhere for a film to hide, nothing to place beside it. Some reviewers clumsily stumble toward The L Word, a show with a deeply conflicted fanbase, saddled with a flawed show that is nevertheless the only thing they have to point to in the culture at large.

It is not Blue Is the Warmest Color's fault that it must carry this weight, but there are other strikes against the film that make it difficult to love. I begin with the rareness of Blue's subject matter because it is a tragic state of affairs, a black mark on cinema that raises the larger issue of the dominance of male voices in the medium - particularly straight white ones. This stems entirely from the enormous amount of money required to produce a film, which places more prejudices in play - a gay woman can sit down to pen a comic book memoir quite easily, but it takes many wealthy men making big decisions to greenlight the same story's big-screen adaptation. The easiest response to the criticism that Kechiche shouldn't have taken on content that would almost certainly have been better produced by a woman is to say "look around at who gets funding - if he didn't do it, who would?"

The other strikes I mention are perhaps just as complicated, but more common and certainly not singular. There are three basic areas of controversy surrounding Blue Is the Warmest Color, though all have deep roots in gender politics: the treatment of the actresses on set (and how it relates to Kechiche's general approach to filmmaking), the depiction of women in the film (both in the technical tradition of "the male gaze" and in the specific presentation of Adéle), and the more specific depiction of lesbian sex (few critics have complained about the general depiction of lesbians beyond these explicit scenes, so the controversy extends beyond the bedroom only insofar as these intimate moments inform one's viewing of the larger picture). Many articles on the movie have confused the two latter topics, preferring to think of the film as inherently about lesbians rather than women. I think this is a mistake that damages an investigation of the first topic, which is to say that assuming the film is a mere attempt at a lesbian love story (or even one at all) gives short shrift to all three issues and misses both the conscious and subconscious point of the film.

I'll begin with the controversy surrounding the making of the film, both because it is the easiest to dismiss and because it informs the way anyone sees the other issues. Although there were some serious labor allegations already brewing, the bulk of the controversy came out of an interview in The Daily Beast shortly after the Cannes win (where the actresses shared the Palmes D'Or with the director, a move that speaks to the uncomfortable politics wrapped up in the film's power dynamics), where the two leads discussed their negative experiences on the set of the film. Initially much of the criticism seems to come from their (understandable) embarrassment over the emotionally raw and explicit sex scenes, but it quickly opens up into more serious descriptions of abuse that depict working conditions that sound certainly toxic if not borderline criminal.

As a leader of an actor's guild, an activist focused on developing healthy gender-safe working conditions, or perhaps a studio executive considering bankrolling the next Kechiche film, these testimonials would merit more concern. As a filmgoer, I'm not sure they are worth very much. Obviously the limits of cinematic exploitation exist, and there's a line at which the story behind the making of a film can overrule any of the artistic value of the finished product (the most extreme being snuff films, but really any film in which intentional physical suffering with long-term damage is difficult if not impossible to accept). But these stories seem more like the psychological scorn heaped on Shelly Duvall by Stanley Kubrick in the making of The Shining than anything approaching dangerous. Without evidence of wrongdoing that goes beyond someone being a terrible person who treats everyone like garbage, wholesale dismissal of a movie seems understandable but hardly mandatory. The grand example of hating the artist but loving the art is either Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will, and in both cases the flaws are so baked into the work itself that it's impossible to avoid. Blue Is the Warmest Color may be fatally masculine in its perspective, but it would be harder (though not impossible) to argue that the film is misogynistic.

So if the film is to be taken for what is on the screen and nothing else, what is to be made of the three-hour personal epic that is Blue Is the Warmest Color? The first thing to note about the film is something everyone notes about it: Adéle Exarchopoulos is a movie star of the highest order. Though this isn't the grandest performance (she's still very young), she's in nearly every scene and it's impossible to look away - nor do you want to. Adéle has that incredible pull in front of the camera that is only tangentially related to beauty, an excitement about what she'll do next that feels dangerous and exciting at the same time. It's fitting that she's making a movie with Sean Penn, who shares the same talent as an actor, and she's the one piece of Blue that needn't be debated.

The next thing everyone notes about the film is that, despite the hype, the sex scenes take up about ten percent of a three hour movie. That means there's a whole (pretty long) movie here that has no sex whatsoever. Once the first blush of the love affair has faded, there's about an hour and a half of the film without any sex at all (though it features a handful of gratuitous ass shots that Manohla Dargis rightly took offense to). I think this is most important because the movie's most complex gender issues are revealed outside of the bedroom, as are the true intentions of the film. The movie certainly wouldn't have received as much attention if it was not for the lengthy sex scene that is the center of the controversy surrounding the movie, but if the film treated this aspect of their love story in an honest way that asserted the importance of sex in the role of relationships, is it the movie's fault that countless other films have had the same opportunity but, fearing the backlash and pigeonholing that comes with explicit sex, have timidly faded to the morning after?

There is no denying the significance of the sex scene, though, and here is where the movie gets into hot water. As someone with no lesbian-sex experience (yet!), I can't tell you how "authentic" the sex is. I can say, however, that the scene felt pretty fucking awkward. In fact, the scene it reminded me of most was the horrible, wonderful waterfall sex scene in Showgirls, which is so special that if you haven't seen it you should really do yourself a favor. That film's sex scenes were odd because it frequently felt like the movie had been made by ten-year-old boys who not only had never had sex before, but had never seen anyone have sex, had never been to Las Vegas, and seemingly believed a "showgirl" was someone who got aggressive about french fries. Needless to say, the fact that I was reminded of this while watching Blue Is the Warmest Color is not good - I guess what I'm saying is that intrinsically I felt this wasn't how any real person had sex. I don't think that's just because the movie is depicting such an unusually passionate encounter - I've seen In the Realm of the Senses, and while the sexual scenes in that film were certainly umm.... interesting? and significantly more plentiful than they are here, they never felt inauthentic.

That said, I have a really hard time making any sort of universal judgment about the scene, because this is where I think many of my straight while male co-conspirators have gotten into hot water. I'm not about to bust out the "mansplaining" headlines, but I tend to think that if you are in a position of privilege and someone calls out a depiction of their gender, race, or other oppressed class as potentially troublesome, it's a good idea to shut up and listen, instead of thrilling at the opportunity to shoot down their concern. Is the sex in Blue Is the Warmest Color unrealistic, pornographic, doomed by "the male gaze"? Perhaps. But the only way I could come to a better conclusion on that is to engage, to discuss, and to read pieces like the wonderful and provocative one by Manohla Dargis.

What's most disappointing about the debate over the sex scene is that it obscures what I see as the more significant problem with Blue Is the Warmest Color, which is its depiction of women, like Dargis points out, not as they are but as they are seen. There are a number of revealing moments throughout the movie that give me pause, but the one that is most apparent - and has been discussed most frequently elsewhere - is the scene in which an art director explains that he believes the female orgasm is magical, that women can experience much more pleasure than a man, and essentially describes the role of the director in the very sex scene that just happened in the film.

It's telling that the secret theme of a film that features two lead women with a focus that almost never strays from their relationship is delivered by a male character we hardly know and never see again. This stand in for Kechiche has just given away the game, and his sly insertion into the love story at hand is most troubling because it is done so consciously, like a gleeful criminal daring us to catch him.

The uncomfortable male gaze of the film doesn't stop there, it's infused in nearly every frame of the movie, from Adéle's casually drooping cigarettes to the camera's remarkable ability to be where her body is going before she gets there. Even as I dismissed the backstory of the filming, it's impossible to overlook the fact that Kechiche has a history of casting beautiful young women in his films. When combined with the pure physical passion of Adéle's character, this fact sticks out in my mind, and the eroticism of her story threatens to overthrow her humanity at every turn. Even a beautiful scene like the art party, infused with empathy and authenticity, artfully paced and shot, can be ruined by a boorish speech or a juxtaposition of Adéle's jealous stares at her girlfriend flirting with an ex and a man she has just met doing the same to her, fascinated by her unattainable status as "Lesbian." The men in the film, constantly sexualizing Adéle, might feel more like critical commentary on the state of men if the film didn't seem so fascinated with the same things they are (and if the implication of the ending wasn't that Adéle would eventually end up with one of them).

These concerns have been obscured by the sex debate, so that moments that have troubling implications and reinforce one of the oldest, most disturbing power dynamics in cinema are overlooked by defenders who dismiss critics as prudish, close-minded, overly sensitive. This is especially a mistake because the lesbian nature of the sex scene obscures the fact that the movie itself is neither about a lesbian (Adéle is bisexual, or at the very least confused about her sexuality) nor is it a lesbian film - which is to say that it is not presenting a lesbian or queer perspective and, illustratively, its director does not consider the movie to be about lesbians. By fixating on the idea that the movie is about lesbians, the conversation has overlooked the larger question of femininity and its role in male-dominated cinema.

I've written a lot here because I am fascinated by the absence of female voices in cinema and dedicated to re-engaging with film in a way that challenges conventional notions of what women should look like on film. Blue Is the Warmest Color stirs up these issues both intentionally and unintentionally, and in many ways its difficult to determine where the film lands on these ideas. There is real truth in many of the moments between Adéle and her lover, and Kechiche's dedication to perfection is apparent throughout the film. Immediately after watching the film, I thought it was a worthy inclusion in the Collection and a noteworthy - if flawed - film in cinema history. After reading about the movie and writing this piece, I'm not sure that the film's most notable achievement isn't that it was able to deliver 20th century gender politics with a 21st century façade.

#694: The Long Day Closes

(Terence Davies, 1992)

Distant Voices, Still Lives is one of my favorite movies made during my lifetime, and a top request for Criterion treatment. So when The Long Day Closes was announced, I had somewhat mixed emotions: it's nice to see Davies in the collection, but I wish it was a different title above his name.

After watching The Long Day Closes, I don't feel that different. In fact, I hope people who have come to Davies because of Criterion's seal of approval would seek out Distant Voices first before seeing this movie - it's not just a better movie, but a better introduction to the artist's style and singular execution, which involves gentle camera movements, dimly lit but meticulously composed visuals, and a loose narrative held together with stark dialogue and nearly constant, mostly diagetic traditional music.

That said, this is still a beautiful movie and a worthy addition to Criterion's ranks. Rather than deal in memory and the passage of time, as much of his work does, The Long Day Closes relishes the moment, depicting a crucial point in childhood as a peaceful but stirring moment in life. It's certainly still from the point of view of the present, but Davies seems more engaged with his setting than in Distant Voices, which floats along through brutal fog and unshakable trauma. It makes the movie feel less experimental even as it expands upon the narrative theory put forth by his earlier features. This is a complex and skilled narrative that is intricately and masterfully composed.

Perhaps this is what makes it feel less alive than Distant Voices. Davies's style is at its best unhinged and dangerous, like a bloody revolution set to cleanse the country of its sins but succumbing to the ever ready truth that past is present. The Long Day Closes is at peace with itself, but it's impossible to shake the feeling that it's all a charade.

#336: Dazed and Confused

(Richard Linklater, 1993)

Dazed and Confused is one of the unusual pop culture artifacts that is both nostalgic and, with the passage of time, itself a piece of nostalgia. Richard Linklater wrote the film in his mid-thirties as an ode to his high school experience in the 1970s, but upon its release the film was embraced by teenagers who identified with the bell-bottoms, long hair, and pot culture in a time when kids were desperate to reject their 80s upbringing. It subsequently became a defining work of the 1990s - no movie other than perhaps Clueless represents my generation of teenagers more effectively, a feat that seems totally ironic considering its dedication to its setting. (Note, too, that Clueless is based on Jane Austen's "Emma" - and what says more about the post-modern 90s than that?)

This achievement is less surprising when you consider how honest and loyally crafted Dazed and Confused is. Though he clearly has the cynical, destructive 80s in mind (most obviously when Marissa Ribisi theorizes that the 80s will be amazing - a clear knowing wink), Linklater never succumbs to the sort of saccharine nostalgia for innocence that George Lucas's American Graffiti is beholden to with regards to the pre-Vietnam War era. Likewise, his ability to shuttle between social strata and lend them all the same level of attention to detail and dignity is remarkable, even more so when considering how rarely this has actually been achieved. Adam Goldberg's nerd and Sasha Jenson's meathead are crafted with equal care for their intelligence and relative sophistication. It would seem unlikely that anyone who sees Dazed and Confused would be unable to recognize at least part of themselves in one or more of these vivid characters.

I've seen Dazed and Confused more times than I can count, but this most recent viewing was the first in years. I was struck by how impressed I was with the filmmaking, particularly from a storytelling perspective. Despite including multiple storylines, Linklater managed to structure the film seamlessly, giving everyone their moments without bumps in the film's momentum. The characters are well-established both through dialog and direction. Framing and establishing shots are carefully selected to hammer home each world with which Linklater is concerned. But there's also a quirkiness that emphasizes Linklater's personal connection to and love for his characters. Linklater is not often mentioned as an influence on Wes Anderson, another Texas director - though less often linked to the state, but the connection came to mind frequently while watching Dazed and Confused.

Linklater's work can often be dismissed as slight and undeserving of serious reflection, even if his movies are almost without fail intellectually stimulating. I think a big part of this is his unambitious scale; with very few exceptions, Linklater mainly focuses on average, thoroughly human characters doing average, thoroughly human things. His core masterpieces, the two Before films (I have yet to see the third), hardly concern themselves with any characters beyond the two leads, while even conventional story structure falls by the wayside. Though Dazed and Confused is similarly narratively loose, the film's format is recognizable to anyone who has seen compressed-time coming-of-age films, and this can make it seem a lot less revolutionary and a lot more specific to its time and place (both in setting and release). Hopefully, this won't prevent new generations of movie lovers from discovering the film, because it deserves a place as one of the fine films about adolescence, even after its nostalgic appeal has faded.

#65: Rushmore

(Wes Anderson, 1998)

There are only a handful of movies in the Criterion Collection I've seen more than Rushmore, yet I haven't put it on in at least four years, since I'm just getting around to writing about it now. This is probably the longest I've gone without seeing it since its release in 1998, opening night in Century City, where it was running for one week to allow Bill Murray to qualify for the Oscars (his snub for this performance remains a total joke). Having seen the film so many times, it's hard to remember what my first response was to it beyond loving it - I do remember that as a budding Kinks fan the soundtrack was especially impressive - but in multiple viewings since I've come to believe there are few movies as successfully executed as this little character piece. Wes Anderson was only 29 when he made it, but his skill and - perhaps even more importantly - his discipline as a filmmaker were already fully formed. His use of flat perspective mixed with subtle handheld work merged an indie aesthetic with a distinct storytelling visual palate that allowed the tone of the film to match up perfectly with its cinematography; Anderson is at once highly stylistic and not at all flashy, twee for the indie generation but devoid of his later films' preciousness (detractors would argue with this last point, but comparatively there's no contest).

Although Anderson's sure hand (and his and Owen Wilson's vision of the story) is what makes Rushmore so impressive from a filmmaking perspective, the movie is largely held together by two impressive performances. It would be entirely impossible to imagine anyone as Max Fischer other than Jason Schwartzman, who inhabits the role so much that he's been trying to run away from it ever since to no avail. Meanwhile, Bill Murray is so funny, so heartbreaking, and so lovable that he's been using the same routine for the last fifteen years, nearly winning an Oscar for a far inferior film in the process. The relationship between the two characters manages to feel authentic and natural without much in the way of exposition; this is mainly thanks to Murray, who looks at Schwartzman with an endearing stare of bemusement and longing - for his own youth just as much as for Schwartzman's. He loves Max because he understands him, but he also envies his naïveté and courage. He wants to be Max far more than Max wants to be him, even after he gets the girl.

Rushmore is not the towering achievement many of the best films in the Criterion Collection manage to be, yet it is one of the few perfect films in the set. It's especially impressive because it's lack of ambition never gets in the way of the power of its story. Over the past decade and a half, this has turned out to be the key to Wes Anderson's immense talent; Max says early on in Rushmore that "I guess you just gotta find something you love to do and do it for the rest of your life. For me that's going to Rushmore." For Anderson, it's producing quirky semi-nostalgic character portraits of characters struggling with their identities (usually wrapped up in parent issues). There is a case to be made that the messy but brilliant The Royal Tennenbaums is Anderson's crowning achievement, but every film he's made after Rushmore is a response to this one, because it is a perfect execution of his voice. There were probably only two other filmmakers who produced great, truly unique work in the US in the 90s, not coincidentally also with their second features: Quentin Tarantino with Pulp Fiction and Paul Thomas Anderson with Boogie Nights. Both of those films are great, but unquestionably messy affairs - it's Wes Anderson with his quiet story and dogged focus who produced the exact film he intended to make. Although its reputation has been somewhat diminished by complaints that his style has devolved into a schtick, what's actually onscreen never fails to enchant, and the director's choices for set design, costumes, music, and even cinematography make the film as timeless as it seemed when it was first released. Rushmore is one of the best-known and most-owned films in the Collection, but even that assessment understates its value to the series. It's the gold standard for contemporary film for Criterion, and fifteen years later it's every bit the masterpiece it appeared to be upon its release.

#234: The Tin Drum

(Volker Schlondorff, 1979)

I had the opportunity to see The Tin Drum on the big screen this month as part of the screenings of the new director's cut that Criterion just put out. Although I am very happy I went, I didn't love the film as much as I hoped it would. Though I haven't read the book, my suspicions are that The Tin Drum is a good example of the difficulties that come with adapting books for the big screen. The  story is obviously meant as satire and allegory, but what reads as lyrical on the page must be rendered literal on screen. The film then has been drained of much of the humor that would make it more appealing and believable, and the end result is a very strange film indeed.

I haven't been especially taken with the other Schlondorff films in the Collection. Young Torless was disturbing and worthwhile - and I liked it much more than Coup de Grace - but I wasn't especially moved by it and it didn't stay with me especially long. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum is a masterpiece, but it was co-directed by another significant voice in German cinema, Margarethe von Trotta. The Tin Drum, then, is Schlondorff's true stand-out, the film for which he will be remembered. And it's certainly big in scope, stretching over a number of years and even generations, told from the perspective of a boy who chooses not to age and lives through World War II as an eternal toddler. The film is strongly sexual, especially with the scenes that have been added into this edition which involve Rasputin and an orgy. But this sexuality's ties to its historical and political commentary seems muted without the novel's prose to ostensibly guide the way.

The film has fleeting moments of real impressive cinema - and despite its long running time, I was never bored - but I just ultimately don't think it comes together as a clear and compelling fable. I had a lot of high hopes for this one, but it was a bit of a letdown.

#646: The Kid With a Bike

(Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes, 2011)

I wouldn't necessarily say that The Kid With a Bike, the latest film from the Dardennes brothers, is better than Rosetta, certainly the most highly praised of their three movies in the collection. But this one is my favorite nevertheless, mainly because it moved me more than any movie I've watched recently.

I think a big part of the reason the film affected me so much is my personal situation. Fortunately, I have never had anywhere near the problems Cyril has had, and my son will hopefully grow up comfortable in the knowledge that his father will always be there for him. But because I have a young son, I identified so strongly with Cyril that I saw my son in him - even if he is 10 years older than him and half a world away. On its surface, The Kid With a Bike is about the need for the love of a father, and seeing a boy come to grips with his rejection was no different than watching a young boy being hurt or even killed - its impact was this visceral.

The Kid With a Bike is in a deeper sense a guide through Raising Cain, an exploration of the process of a boy discovering his emotions and struggling to express them in a broken society. It's not just Cyril that struggles with it here - there's also the criminal who befriends him, Samantha's boyfriend who must stick up for his honor to a young boy, and finally the son of the newspaper man that Cyril attacked. The men in The Kid With a Bike paint a dim portrait of masculinity and self-esteem. It might be said that Samantha saves Cyril from this cycle of violence and neglect, but I prefer to think Cyril saves himself. One of the most striking moments in the film comes after Cyril has attempted to give the money to his father, who has - perhaps reluctantly - rejected it. As he bikes home in silence, the camera tracks alongside him and we begin to understand his turning point has come - he's ready to accept Samantha's love over the chance to prove himself as a man.

One thing I really love about the Dardennes's films is how accessible they are. These are heavy, deeply textured films that require emotional strength and challenge assumptions about humanity. But they are also tightly constructed, economical in both plotting and direction, and thematically focused. It makes them a pleasure to watch even though they are intense and occasionally exhausting. A non-Criterion title, The Son, is often cited as their best film - I've almost watched it for years now, but after seeing the films in the collection, I'm really looking forward to grabbing the three films they made in the 00s and getting wrapped up in the lives of the vivid characters they create.

Update: I just realized how much this movie reminded me of an article that came out a few months ago on the DC Sniper. Obviously no comparison in terms of what Cyril is asked to do - and it's only one of the many dynamics in the movie - but it's a fascinating read and speaks to the male psyche at a young age.

#388: The Two of Us

(Claude Berri, 1967)

The Two of Us not only would not be made in Hollywood today, it would be laughed out of development offices everywhere. "Where's the third act?" they would say, adding that "it's like having a gun in the first act and not using it in the third," or some other misguidedly rendered cliche about what makes a proper movie. Indeed, the film does lack its crucial turn, the sole reason for its existence within a conventional narrative framework. The fundamental question is this: how can a boy who is Jewish go to live with a man who hates Jews under the pretense that he is not Jewish and have that lie stand beyond the final credits? Without this reveal, the movie loses its confrontational moment, the one that would elucidate its themes and lead to the inevitable conclusion of its characters arcs. Yet by ignoring this imperative, the movie becomes all the more revolutionary, a movie about average people who are never called on to rise above their place or sink to new depths. Its finally a movie about racism and its unavoidable complexity and compartmentalization.

The center of the film is Michel Simon, an actor that was by the time he took the role one of the great actors in French cinema, with a career that stretched back to the legendary L'Atalante. His character is an early prototype Archie Bunker, a man with a firmly entrenched world view that is quickly and loudly dying out around him. He's a conservative without power outside his "castle," just as Archie is. And like Archie, once you get past his antiquated, potentially dangerous worldview, he's a gentle and warm person, a decent person. It's the gap that is most profound here, mainly because the strain of racism Simon's character represents, anti-semitism in particular, was one of the most destructive in history. Despite his distance from the actual tragedy, his acceptance of the culture makes him a difficult character for French audiences in 1967, still struggling with the history of the Vichy government. Berri was apparently so concerned with this that he put a disclaimer at the beginning of the film essentially saying "oh, the silly innocence of a child." It's an unnecessary addition today, but indicates how unique the film was at the time. Today, it's unique for a different reason, that absence of shattered perceptions mentioned above. The addition of this realization - and what Simon's Grandpa would have done with it - might have made the film more conventionally satisfying, maybe even more emotionally powerful. But without, the film is much more realistic, which ultimately makes it more valuable and moving.

#597: Tiny Furniture

(Lena Dunham, 2010)

OK, I'm going to start here: Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture is a refreshing and honest film that unquestionably taps into the contemporary art and cultural zeitgeist and is a superb representation of modern American independent filmmaking. It unquestionably deserves its place in the Criterion Collection, and people who single it out as a uniquely problematic inclusion are doing so out of animosity towards a filmmaker who is a young woman.

I'm making all kinds of big sweeping statements, so let's unpack this a little. Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture was made in 2009 for $45,000 and starred not only Dunham, but her sister, mother, and childhood home. It caused a big enough firestorm at SXSW in 2010 to be bought by IFC - which of course put it on the shortlist for Criterion inclusion - and to provide its creator with the chance to develop her HBO show Girls. The film was subsequently released in theaters to mostly positive reviews (though there were a few big detractors). When it was leaked last year that Criterion would indeed be picking up the film for its main line, there was a huge uproar within both the general film nerd and specific Criterion fan communities. The basic complaints (beyond just "I hated this movie," which is fair enough) generally fell into three categories:

1. This is going to irreparably damage the Criterion brand.
2. Lena Dunham is an obnoxious person who had everything handed to her and some friend of her parents is secretly delivering her to stardom and artistic legitimacy.
3. Who cares about this rich white girl from Manhattan and her hipster problems?
4. This movie is totally derivative and poorly made - there are 1000 movies by obscure Foreign filmmakers that Criterion should be focusing on instead of this garbage.

There's a lot of bullshit here, so I'll just systematically demolish these.

1. This is going to irreparably damage the Criterion brand.

This is obviously the most absurd of the four statements. First of all, since the film has now been in stores for three months, I can officially confirm that the Criterion website is still live. Second, let's run down a few titles under the Criterion banner: Armageddon, Chasing Amy, Sweetie, The Life Aquatic, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Border Radio. Regardless of how you feel about any or all of these, they are all movies that have been cited as drags on the Criterion Collection, and have been largely decried by a large number of film fans. There are plenty of other films in the Collection that could be considered equally controversial (OK, maybe not as controversial as Armageddon, but you get the picture). Dunham's promise as a filmmaker could be a losing gamble for Criterion - but no matter, they've lost that gamble before with George Washington. Even the IFC collaboration that has yielded so many spectacular Criterion titles has certainly produced work just as inconsequential if not more so - think The Secret of the Grain, A Christmas Tale, or the fascinating but deeply flawed Gomorrah. Let's move on.

2. Lena Dunham is an obnoxious person who had everything handed to her and some friend of her parents is secretly delivering her to stardom and artistic legitimacy.

This is a common argument on the internet, but it's only employed selectively. I'll refrain from listing the hundreds of people who have gained fame and success in the entertainment industry simply because of their family connections, but for some reason we only hear about these connections when people are decrying someone's work (I am certainly guilty of this with regards to someone like Sofia Coppola, who I find to be supremely untalented). I'll explain later why I think Dunham's obnoxiousness is actually one of her biggest assets, but it should be made clear that obnoxiousness is generally a subjective claim. Finally, do we really have to take seriously the idea that Criterion has somehow given in to some mass conspiracy among the New York elites to anoint Dunham a legitimate filmmaker? Regardless of how you feel about Girls, the show's ability to enter the cultural discussion and generate disparate perceptions of its significance and quality should indicate that she is able to hold her own. There are plenty of well-connected "artists" languishing in insignificance.

3. Who cares about this rich white girl from Manhattan and her hipster problems?

This really drives me crazy. Is every movie ever made supposed to be focused on poor people in some far-flung corner of the world? Are we expected to ignore the existential crises in our own lives simply because we know other people have it worse? Is "there are starving kids in Africa" really meant to be a stand-in for film criticism? I don't believe in the "write what you know" ethos 100%, but I do think that someone who chooses to reflect their own life on screen should not be dismissed simply because they are privileged, particularly when, like Dunham, they are so intently focused on avoiding any skewed depictions of their lives that would seek to glamorize or idealize themselves. This is extremely hard to do in film, just by nature of producing a conventional narrative work with a central protagonist, and should not be overlooked as an enormous accomplishment in Tiny Furniture. The fact that the film happens to be about a woman with a very specific, rich background (both in terms of financial situation and cultural currency) is not relevant - dismissing a film simply for being too familiar or devoid of true suffering rings to me just as false as dismissing a film for being too foreign or too depressing in its authenticity. I'd also like to point out that the greatest movie ever made is about a rich guy who just wants to be a kid again and play in the snow.

Finally, I'm not really sure what qualifies Dunham as a hipster. That her parents are artists? That she is from New York? Neither of these characteristics are true of most hipsters who live in New York. Maybe it's that her film premiered at SXSW, or that she gained notoriety through YouTube and continues to use new media and contemporary cultural signifiers in her work? This again rings false to me - certainly artists should not be faulted for existing within and even reflecting their own realities. Perhaps the oddest thing to me about identifying Dunham as a hipster is how much this now-pejorative term has come to be intertwined with irony - yet Tiny Furniture is almost certainly one of the most genuine depictions of youth seen in the last decade. Comparing the film to something like Garden State - which was ostensibly authentic but was steeped in quirky winks to the audience and saturated with cultural cash-ins in the form of over-utilized indie-tastic music and an unearned happy ending that even the characters seemed to be surprised they could get away with - makes this new earnestness feel decidedly anti-hipster (note: this is admittedly certainly changing - fast). This is not done in an intentional way, even, but instead feels like a byproduct of the true goal of Dunham's work, which is to be totally honest with herself and her audience. Of course, it's every person's right to decide what problems are legitimate and what movies they want to watch based on the legitimacy of the conflict within the film. But to dismiss out of hand a specific point of view simply because its creator hasn't earned the cultural caché of living the struggle feels condescending not just to privileged people who go through real difficulties but to those artists who actually do struggle by reducing their hardships to an entry pass into legitimacy.

4. This movie is totally derivative and poorly made - there are 1000 movies by obscure Foreign filmmakers that Criterion should be focusing on instead of this garbage.

The first half of this statement is the hardest argument to dismiss since it is mostly subjective. So I'll address the second half first. Let's look at the first 25 movies in the Collection. This list includes movies like This is Spinal Tap, The Silence of the Lambs, and Robocop, three movies that would certainly have been (and eventually were) treated to deluxe editions by their respective studios. Yet even at that early stage Criterion was selecting mainstream films by well-known directors "at the expense" of movies like The Apu Trilogy or films by any lesser-known, much-lauded filmmaker. My point is that - even if it's what most of us value most about the brand - Criterion is not and has never been solely a vehicle for obscure and/or unavailable titles. In fact, my guess is that if it wasn't for the difficult process of attaining the rights to each movie we would see a lot more mainstream and American films in the collection - one need only look to the list of laserdisc releases to confirm this. So Tiny Furniture did not take the place of some other film that would have your film geek pants all messy, and it's not in the Collection to earn Criterion a little extra cash. (Although who can fault them for supporting releases like their Imamura boxset with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?) It is because - like it or not - the powers that be at Criterion thought the film was relevant enough to be included in the conversation about what film means, both in general and in 2012.

I've been spending a lot of time on why arguments against including the film seem misguided, but what are the reasons in favor of including the film? First of all, I want to make clear that I don't think Tiny Furniture is a "Great" film, and offhand I can think of five IFC/Criterion releases that are vastly superior to it: Fish Tank, Carlos, Summer Hours, Revanche, and Certified Copy. However, I do think the film is funny, heartfelt, and extremely relatable. These are subjective viewpoints, and I don't think enjoying a movie alone should qualify it for inclusion. I also think it's beautifully shot, particularly on such a small budget, but there are countless terrible, beautiful movies, so again I would hesitate to select it just on that basis.

I think what makes Tiny Furniture so valuable from a film history perspective is its unique ability to zero in via both form and content on what constitutes an artistic life in the modern world. As someone who gained a small, tiny amount of success by blogging, I know what the weird relationship is that develops between the reader and the blogger, how strange it is to navigate between the internet and reality, and how different success is within the context of a website or viral video. What I think Dunham is able to accomplish particularly well in the film is lowering her character to the viewers' level, mimicking the internet's instant feedback, person-to-person dynamic within the context of a medium which has consistently avoided this relationship - first with the glamorous, unattainable lives of flashy stars, then with scaled-up epics that went literally bigger than life and have particularly in the CGI age trended heavily toward the fantastic. Tiny Furniture's bare honesty - not just borne out in its creator's complete willingness to be seen as the superficially anti-feminine female in terms of body image and psychological approach to sexuality, but in the impressive ability to craft an authentic (if carefully crafted) depiction of her own life - leaves the viewer feeling like they know the core of this person. The fact that her character can do stupid things or act selfishly or immaturely and present herself in a narcissistic, obnoxious way strengthens the perceptions of relatability by heightening the disconnect between Dunham's protagonist and the protagonists of the vast majority of movies. Her authenticity shines through as character flaws. Even if the viewer doesn't recognize themselves in what they see, they feel comfortable building up or tearing down this image that Dunham has constructed of herself.

With this accomplishment so central to the success and legitimacy of Criterion's selection, the vitriol and vaguely sexist comments that the release elicited were actually a confirmation of this legitimacy. If Dunham's work felt more rarefied (as a film like Fish Tank seems), the unruly commenting masses might not have felt as comfortable rejecting it so viciously. Part of what Tiny Furniture achieves - if again unintentionally - is a sort of DIY manifesto: by positioning her heroine as an honest and almost hideously relatable portrayal of herself, the viewer can't help but wonder why they haven't made their own movie starring them. The fact that Dunham's onscreen persona is so antithetical to the conventional persona of a filmmaker enhances this perception; after all, if a young, insecure, self-absorbed, immature girl can make a movie, certainly I can, too!

Of course, I've put off the elephant in the room long enough, which is that word: girl.  It's used a lot with Dunham, and sexism undoubtedly plays a significant role in the backlash against Tiny Furniture. To be clear: not liking Tiny Furniture - a specific and personal movie with a very unique tone - does not make you sexist. In fact, I would imagine most people who watch Tiny Furniture won't like it. But I would have a hard time believing that the same type of film made by a man (or, to a smaller degree, an older woman) would engender such antagonism. It doesn't take a Google expert to find countless comments throughout the online discussions of the film (and of Dunham in general) that invoke her appearance/age, while many more comments circle around the issue of femininity, often dismissing the film's subject matter and relevance to cinema. Tiny Furniture is a movie about women - even if it's about this one woman - and movies about women are much easier to reject in a male-dominated medium. But even more, the fact that Dunham is confident enough to present herself in such a naked manner - especially in areas which are typically identified as problematic for women - opens her up to this kind of gender-based criticism. Dunham is often compared to Woody Allen (which seems a bit premature even to me), but even Allen's persona was afforded some degree of glamour by getting all the good lines (and the beautiful girls). You might dislike all of of Allen's whining, but at least he's funny! Dunham, on the other hand, refuses to stress her character's redeeming qualities, instead asking you to relate to the darker side of her personality. This is extremely intentional, and it is not how women are supposed to behave, particularly in Hollywood, where a nudge nudge, wink wink ugly performance by a leading actress can give her an Oscar for her bravery.

I certainly understand the legitimate complaints about Tiny Furniture. The film is undeniably self-centered - though, again, this is more a style than a complaint since there have been countless great works of art that were entirely narcissistic. Though I found Dunham's protagonist relatable in a negative sort of way, I could see how someone would find her complaining and selfishness insufferable - but is this any different than the characters on Seinfeld? From a plot perspective, Dunham breaks virtually no new ground here - it really is a rather bland presentation of the quarter-life crisis that has been beaten into the collective psyche over the past ten years, with only the fact that it is from a female perspective lending any real novelty. But anyone who has spent time in New York (and I suspect most people who haven't) will recognize the bulk of these characters from their lives, and even the smallest role is fleshed out and given a unique voice - perhaps Dunham's greatest natural technical skill is her ear for dialog.

I've probably said too much here, but I don't feel like I've come across a full defense of the film's inclusion in the Collection, and I thought it deserved it. Tiny Furniture isn't going to become legendary or make anyone's Sight and Sound ten best list, but I wouldn't be surprised if we look back at this moment in time as a turning point in both filmmaking from a micro-budget - and consequently deeply, almost terrifyingly, personal - perspective and a shift in the collective tone from one of removed irony to one of naked and genuine emotion. Tiny Furniture, like its title, is a small and somewhat silly representation of that larger picture, a little movie that points to a much bigger, subterranean cultural shift.