#805: A Poem Is a Naked Person

(1974, Les Blank)

It says Leon Russell's name on the cover, but A Poem Is a Naked Person might as well have "A Snake" in its place (or any one of the other myriad characters here) for all the movie is about Leon Russell. This might be chalked up simply to the style that Blank has used in his many shorts, most of which can be found on Always for Pleasure, the superb retrospective Criterion released a few years ago. But as that collection showed, Blank was more than capable of giving a subject its proper due, most notably on Sprout Wings and Fly and The Blues According to Lightnin' Hopkins, the latter of which was likely the film that got him this for-hire gig after Russell and his business partner landed on a wild idea that was likely matched with equally impressive amounts of illegal narcotics.

The more likely reason Blank drifted away from Russell says little about the nature of Blank's talents and more about where his interests lay. Most notably, Blank was a student of tradition and the dying micro-cultures of America. Music was one of his major pursuits, and this is why his pairing with Russell made at least some sense. But Russell's primary musical success came with a very trendy at the time style of blues rock merged with gospel and country underpinnings, something that likely horrified Blank more than it interested him. It's easy to see where Blank's interests overlap with Russell's: a full George Jones acoustic performance (and a superb one at that) is given its due, as is a rousing session musician rendition of "Goodnight, Irene," a standard country song. When Blank talks to Ambrose Campbell or the man the film's press release claims to be a suspect in the famous D.B. Cooper hijacking case, you get the sense he really wishes the movie was about them, not Russell. On the other hand, Russell's concert performances are often shot haphazardly and rarely played out for more than a short beat. If you didn't know the movie was supposed to be about Russell, you wouldn't know watching the film, though you might think Blank was a little more into the guy than it seems considering he was ostensibly paid to film him.

Like Blank, I won't be taking much Leon Russell away from A Poem Is a Naked Person, despite enjoying the film very much. I have mixed feelings about Russell, who wrote some great songs and did a lot of session work for great musicians, but never seemed like much more than an average performer for his times. He was often susceptible to the common indulgences of the times both in his recordings (which are uneven) and his live performances (which are dated). Still, I do think he comes off well enough here, and as mentioned the performance of "Goodnight, Irene" that he leads is one of the highlights of the film. What's most memorable about the movie is the infusion of Oklahoma and Texas, particularly the balance of traditional conservative middle America and the offbeat revolution that was sweeping the country in the early 70s. It's wonderful to see the crowd at Willie Nelson's performance at Floore's, priceless to hear from the everyday folks coming out to see buildings get taken down in the city, and the way Blank balances it all on the precipice of art and commerce, yesterday and tomorrow, makes the film more than just a movie about someone it doesn't want to be about.

#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.

#737: Les Blank: Always for Pleasure

(Les Blank, 1968-1995)

The best parts of Les Blank's films are when no one is talking. In these moments, people cook, dance, sing, smile, play instruments, walk through nature. The buildings hum with their unique histories, bound by their American essence; a run down house with a man playing guitar on the porch stoop; a simple roadside tavern ignited by a neon sign advertising the music within; farms and tents; kitchens and living rooms; an occasional store selling records or repairing instruments or making sausage. Parades go by. Meals are prepared by the pound. The omniscient narrator (who never learns to talk) is distracted by another song or good soup on the stove.

The themes of music and food are consistent throughout Blank's 14 films collected on Always for Pleasure (along with a handful of shorts and some extras covering his career). Even in a film like Gap-Toothed Women, which explores conventional ideas of beauty, Blank can't help but home in on an apple or an artist's portrait of musicians. But Blank is most at home filming the musicians themselves, who make up the vast majority of individuals he profiles here and even crop up in films that are ostensibly about something else like garlic or gumbo. He no doubt does this because of his own interest in music (and it's worth noting his connection to the Lomax family, as John's son and Alan's brother John Jr. introduced him to Lightnin' Hopkins and Alan's daughter Anna helped edit on a few of his films), but it's also a conscious decision to make the various elements of each culture he explores inextricably linked, thereby creating a fuller picture of the specific element he's highlighting. Other elements, such as fashion, marriage, work, and friendship, come up frequently as well. But the two constants throughout are music and food.

Blank's films get more conventional as the set goes on, with his last few films featuring significantly more talking and something that approaches mainstream documentary storytelling. Yet there are unique charms to each of his films, while they all retain Blank's singular perspective. A relatively lyrical film like A Well-Spent Life crackles with the same energy as In Heaven There Is No Beer?, which could be a (still fairly quirky) PBS special, and both are equally enjoyable, even as the silences begin to come less frequently and with more action to fill up the space.

The biggest issue here is, of course, the cultural tourism label that has also dogged the Lomax family as their legacy has grown. Blank comes from a well-off family in Florida, but the bulk of his subjects, particularly in his early films, are poor country people, often black, dotting the backwaters of Louisiana. As someone who is unfamiliar with that world, it's impossible to know how "right" Blank got it, but his work here never feels disrespectful and always seems aware of his outsider status. Certainly a film made by someone of each culture would deliver a richer and truer portrait of its subject in both form and content. But this doesn't make Blank's perspective any less valuable, because for the vast majority of people his camera is the placeholder for our own forays into the world he is filming. We would dwell on the pig being slaughtered just as Blank does; we might delight in the tall tales and idealize the easy (hard) living of the Cajuns ourselves; we get caught up in the colors and sounds of Carnival in New Orleans to an even greater degree than Blank's camera.

Ultimately, Blank's career was spent documenting isolated American cultures at the dawn of mass media. While the pockets Blank highlights remain, their window to the outside world has grown larger and their choice to remain separate from the greater culture has become more conscious. The moments depicted in Blank's film already seem mournful and urgent, begging for a few more minutes with this time that might never come back. Just as he filmed a broad range of musicians at the twilights of their careers and lives, the music played and the food cooked feels short for this Earth, even as it seems like it has existed forever. America's future is homogeneous and bright, so it's best to get a good look before the past and present are gone.

#689: Trances

(Ahmed Maânouni, 1981)

Along with being one of the first films selected for Martin Scorsese's World Cinema project, Trances is a major positive step for Criterion for one big reason: it is one of two films in this boxset made in Africa. After nearly 700 spine numbers, Criterion has totally neglected what was formerly referred to in the West as the dark continent. Considering the rich history of cinema in places like Senegal and Morocco, where this film was made, this is one of the great holes in Criterion's catalog. Movies like Black Girl and The Iron Gate are great candidates worthy of full standalone releases, but there are most likely hundreds of other films worthy of spine numbers that I've never heard of and would love to see presented.

Anyway, Trances itself is an interesting and somewhat unconventional portrait of an excellent Moroccan band called Nass El Giwhane - if you enjoy the music here, I highly recommend their record Disque D'Or. The movie spends a lot of time watching them perform and rehearse, but there is also a lot about the culture and city surrounding them, especially the politics of the group. Based on the title, I was misguidedly expecting a psychedelic experience, like a North African Head. But what the movie turned out to be was less engaging cinematically but more fascinating in terms of who the band is. It's always interesting to see what pop is defined by in other parts of the world because there are so many differences while still retaining much of what is at the core of the musical experience.

#663: Shoah

(Claude Lanzmann, 1985)

[There are a number of times during Shoah when an interviewee says there are no words to describe their experience. Although it is crude to compare watching a movie to what these people witness in their lives, there are truly no words to describe Shoah. It is both one of the truest representations of cinema and undoubtedly the most harrowing and life-altering film I have ever seen. There is no other film with which to compare it. There is, perhaps, no other film. Some thoughts, messy and honest:]

It took me nearly a month to watch all of Shoah. Part of this is my busy schedule and the film's nearly ten hour running time, but most of it is the need to fully digest and attempt to comprehend each section of the movie. As it moved deeper into its narrative, it became more and more difficult for me to process. There were moments when I stopped paying attention because the emotions were overwhelming. Other sections I rewatched because they were so dense and perspective-altering.

Shoah is a reminder that horror movies are made to understand our deepest fears, while documentaries about horrors are meant to destabilize those same fears. Nightmare on Elm Street is therapy and Irreversible is abuse, but both of these things are comfort, in a way. Shoah is uncertainty in the form of truth. It's the electron knocked out of its orbit, hurtling towards us.

I've never been to Germany, though my last name is German, from a family that emigrated in the 1850s. In some ways, Lanzmann paints a more damning picture of Poland, though his account is extremely controversial and should be balanced by the knowledge of how many Christian Polish people died during the war, often fighting what they knew was a losing battle. But it is Germany that is stained by the Holocaust, and the German people - many of whom had no idea what was going on - who must live with it until there is no longer a Germany. I don't think I could ever go to Germany after having seen Shoah. I don't really think there should be a Germany any more to go to.

Many of the key people Lanzmann interviews in the film are now dead. Lanzmann interviewed them in the 70s, just 30 years after the events they describe. It is horrifying to me that the 70s were just three decades after the Holocaust. It fills me with great sadness to think that the men and women who can tell us first-hand what happened will soon all be gone from this Earth. I want them to have peace, I want the pain to be gone from their eyes. I want them to live forever, though. I don't want anyone else to tell their stories but them.

Fuck Saló.

My maternal grandparents were 20-something American Jews when they found out about the Holocaust. My grandfather fought in Europe, spending time in France and Italy, mostly. I don't know if it matters that you are Jewish - maybe if you had family in Europe that was killed or barely survived like they did it meant more to you. I like to think it didn't, but it's hard to find the kind of impact the Holocaust should have had in American culture in the late 40s. Sometimes it's hard for me to believe there was any culture.

I lived through 9/11, like we all did, only I was a little closer than most and still miles away. I lived just below Canal St. and watched both towers fall. I saw people walking up the streets covered with soot and dust, some with minor injuries that were ripples from the tidal wave that hit the bottom of the island. Rumors swirled of more attacks and we all wondered what could possibly happen next. I say this because we all try to take our own experiences and feel like we can relate to the stories we hear. The fear and confusion I felt that day and in the subsequent weeks is my own, but I am ashamed of it. I have lived a life of privilege. We all have.

Perhaps the most harrowing section of the film is a letter that ends the first half in which problems with the vans that were being used to commit mass murder are laid out in bland bureaucratic prose, referring to the Jews as the "merchandise." It's a chilling inadvertent commentary on any system's ability to normalize the ultimate horrors through political language and mental separation. The letter was written by Walter Rauff, a Nazi whom many consider to be responsible for the murder of 100,000 Jews. He also allegedly worked with Israel after the war as a secret agent meant to foment unrest among the new country's neighboring enemies. When his mission failed, the Israeli secret service helped him escape capture and flee to South America, where he worked with Pinochet and died of lung cancer in the 1980s. This kind of self-serving purposeful dismissal of justice is almost as horrific as the crimes of which Rauff was accused.

Although the bulk of the film's information comes from spoken words, like all pure cinema you don't need the sound to understand the full impact. There are essentially three images in Shoah. The most common is not human, but is instead the scene of the crime, as one understated synopsis put it. The camera winds its way through contemporary Europe, spending most of its time in the overgrown ruins of the camps themselves. Unlike Night and Fog, shot twenty years earlier and whose poetic and haunting exploration of the camps is in no way rendered obsolete by this definitive work, Shoah is shot in a workmanlike manner that dwells on the natural elements of the ruins' surroundings. Lanzmann has no interest in telling you what it was like to be in the camps by showing you this footage. He is binding all of us on Earth to them through common signifiers. It's a constant reminder that this happened, not in a place but to humanity, perhaps if one is inclined in front of God, surrounded by Him. The second image in Shoah is of the complicit, the Polish citizens who stood by and watched and the German SS and bureaucrats who were at best willfully ignorant. Some of these people are unrepentant and soulless, content to rattle off facts as if their testimony absolves them. Most, however, are at war within themselves, desperate to justify their inaction even when it was clearly justified and they really were powerless to help. These people are us, and we must reconcile that knowledge with who we believe we are today. The third image is the survivor, and this is the image one will never forget. The stories in Shoah are unlike any you have heard before, but the look in the eyes of these men and women is indescribable. If there is one feeling they all have, it is guilt. I think most Holocaust survivors would reject being called victims, even though the horrors they went through and must live with are incomprehensible. They are survivors because someone else died in their place and there was nothing they could do about it. They are at their most emotional when they plead with Lanzmann to understand that there was nothing they could do, even if what they did do was more than any of us could have. They do not cry for themselves, but for their families, for strangers.

Lanzmann is a controversial figure, particularly in Poland where the film was denounced as an attack on the Polish people that omitted much of the hardship and tragedy that country suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Certainly, if you only watched the film and knew nothing else of World War II history, the depiction of Warsaw in the final sequence of the film would lead you to believe that things were normal and sunny for the non-Jewish population. Yet Lanzmann's forceful perspective on the Holocaust is essential to his telling of the story. His anger and disgust is present in his interviews with SS members, while his aggression towards the Polish who in some ways benefitted from the deportation of the Jews is evident and sometimes feels illogical and unfair. But without this emotion the film would feel dead and the story would not have nearly as much impact because there would be nothing with which to engage. Telling the story of a grand tragedy without a perspective is an act of cowardice. Lanzmann knew that.

I don't think most people know that the Nazis kept their industrial-scale mass murder of the Jews secret from even high-ranking members of the SS. Many people chose to turn a blind eye, for sure, but there were undoubtedly many who honestly had no idea of what was being done in their name. As explained by the only historian in Shoah, the reason this was so easy to do was that every other thing done to the Jews by the Nazis was old hat in Europe. Basically anything up to the actual "final solution" had been done before, so most Europeans basically said "Here we go again." Perhaps more difficult to conceive of is what he indicates that this means - up until this point, the Nazi bureaucrats did not need to make their personal mark on what they were being asked to do. It was only when they were asked to commit the greatest organized crime against humanity perhaps in history that they needed to think outside the box. Because the secret needed to be kept, nothing could be detailed in communication from the leaders to the field, which meant they were somewhat on their own. The Holocaust was, in essence, a triumph of middle management.

Everyone should see Shoah, but don't ever see Shoah. It's a terrible truth that once it's known you can't forget. It's history made eternally relevant, a social service that is invaluable. It's hopefully something we'll never need, but it's vital to have it on reserve. It's also a living thing, cinema that sinks into you even in its most static, uncinematic moments. Roger Ebert said it shouldn't be judged against other movies and vice versa, and I know exactly what he means. As a film, it would rank with the greatest ever made. But there are no films to rank it with. There is only Shoah.

#648: Chronicle of a Summer

(Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1960)

I feel asleep on two separate occasions while watching Chronicle of a Summer. This doesn't mean it's a bad movie or I didn't like it (I have a one-year-old, so late nights are anything past 10), but I bring it up because I expected to be totally enraptured with this movie, and was quite surprised when it ended up causing me to drift off. Part of this was the pacing, but a lot of the problem was simply that the people in it were not as interesting as I expected them to be.

There were still a few moments that kind of blew my mind. The first happened towards the beginning of the film when an old man is interviewed. He tells us that he was born in '82, the same year I was born - only 100 years earlier in 1882. This of course immediately made me think about the fact that I will be 78 in 2060 - if I live that long!

The second moment occurred later during a conversation that was initially about race. It was a somewhat uncomfortable conversation, both for the viewer and the people having it, and it was a reminder that while racial politics have changed enormously in the last half-century (something that's quite obvious in the conversation), this  awkwardness when addressing the topic has not diminished much. However, partway into the conversation the facilitator asked two of the men if they knew what the numbers on one of the women's arm referred to. Here was a woman who was probably around my age who had survived the Holocaust! In a lifetime of watching movies, I don't think the proximity of that most horrifying of events to my own time had ever seemed more real to me. It made me immediately recontextualize all of the films I had seen about the Holocaust from the 50s and 60s. Works like Night and Fog, The Two of Us, and The Shop on Main Street were connected to real people who went to see them, people my age who couldn't look at them as works addressing a generic "history" but as works speaking to their own histories. It's not a thought that is easily reconcilable with an innocent view of the world, and it's impossible for me to understand what it would be like to have to shape a world in which that was your introduction to what humans are capable of.

Both of these moments were, of course, unintentional. But they affected me much more than anything the film did with purpose. This is an inevitable product of a documentary, and it's not even an undesirable one - in fact, it might be the most powerful thing about the format. But without a sense of purpose that feels inspired and impressive, the movie felt a little flat to me, like they were stumbling in the dark and occasionally hitting something worthwhile. It makes for an interesting viewing, but not necessarily a memorable one.

#468: Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé

(Jean Painlevé, 1925-82)

Science Is Fiction might not contain a masterpiece of world cinema and it might not be from one of film's greats, but it also might be a perfect representation of everything great about Criterion. The set consists of (shocker) 23 films made by the French scientist and filmmaker Jean Painlevé, plus a series of his shorts scored by indie band Yo La Tengo and a huge compilation of interviews with the director that takes up a full disc. The films themselves range from less than ten minutes to a half hour, and cover a wide ranges of topics and formats, including silent scientific films, jazz-laden pop nature films, and even one stop-motion short the director made. Overall, it's the kind of box that any director with a similar career would undoubtedly be satisfied with - a perfect distillation of the director's work, put into a format that is easily accessible and has the potential to appeal to a wide variety of film nerds.

My two favorite sections of this set after one complete viewing are the popular films and the films for Le Palais de la Découverte. The former collection consists of films that are funny, disturbing, oddly beautiful, and often all three at the same time. Painlevé's influence on later nature films is evident throughout, but it's especially endearing when you see his sense of humor and childlike enthusiasm for introducing these discoveries to a broader audience. When compared to the films he made for a scientific audience, it is even clearer how deliberate and smart these choices are. The silent popular films he made, the menu explains, were shown in avant-garde cinemas in the 1920s in Paris. As Woody Allen so wisely exploited in Midnight in Paris, this era must have been an indescribably exciting time, as modern science and art took over, war had supposedly ended, there was yet no depression, and the world seemed limitless. Seeing these films when they were produced must have been an experience unlike any other.

The latter set of films is not made up of nature documentaries, but are instead semi-lectures on some of the most fascinating and thought-provoking areas of contemporary science, including the fourth dimension, the universe, and the comparison between speed and distance. Even though I have learned about all three of these subjects extensively in the past, these were still fascinating and immediately accessible presentations of each. The short on the universe in particular reminded me just how much we take for granted everyday, how seemingly content we are to remain ignorant of how our world is constructed - or even how we exist in the first place. Of course, this is not willful ignorance - we all wish we could understand what we have yet to understand. But it's a reminder that none of us are really doing anything except those who have dedicated their lives to discovering the answers to the questions of existence. Everything else is small by comparison.

#644: Pina

(Wim Wenders, 2011)

One of my friends, who has a moderate appreciation for modern dance, said to me after watching Pina, "I feel like if you don't like the stuff in it, you can never like dance," by which he meant that these dancers are so impressive and remarkably skilled that they represent the pinnacle of the artform. With that gauntlet thrown down, I... kind of like dance. On the one hand, the dancers here are unquestionably accomplished and impressive, and there are moments that I became completely enraptured. On the other hand, unlike the Martha Graham collection, these are mostly clips from bigger pieces, interspliced with footage of Pina (she recently passed away unexpectedly) and interviews about her with the dancers in her company. This format can be extremely frustrating, as there are frequently moments where a performance is just getting good only to be interrupted by footage of the dancer talking or a cutaway to another performance.

Pina as a whole mirrors this uneven rhythm, which seems ironic for a work made about perfect rhythm. At one moment the film is extremely beautiful and speaks to the freedom and artistic sensibility of its subject. But just as quickly the moment ends and jerks toward another disjointed but similarly impressive moment. This means the film is mostly a pleasure to watch but only with a goldfish's sensibility - any reflection on what has come more than a few minutes before is going to be a reminder that the movie has yet to establish an overall trajectory.

Wenders often makes big messy movies. His two narrative films in the collection, Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire, are both masterpieces first of form and then of content, but they are packed with ideas about that form and their themes are too huge to be fully explored within one movie. On the other hand, Wenders's most well-known documentary, Buena Vista Social Club, veers towards PBS in structure (though it's been over a decade since I saw it). Pina is a lot closer to this latter movie, but it doesn't go deep enough into the film's subject to get at the essence of these artists the way Wenders did with the earlier film. Even accounting for the fact that I have an immeasurably larger interest in Cuban music than I do in modern dance, Pina lacks the human spark seen with BVSC, and instead remains simply a beautiful document of a group of insanely talented artists who nevertheless might have benefited from a more straightforward presentation of their skills.

#406: Martha Graham: Dance on Film

(Nathan Kroll, 1957-1961)

Watching Martha Graham's works filmed here, Appalachian Spring and Night Journey, before I watched the documentary made first, A Dancer's Life, might have made me dismiss them as something I wasn't very interested in. Even watching these TV shows in chronological order (though the plays themselves are actually from the 40s), I was most taken by the behind-the-scenes look. But having been introduced to the process these dancers went through, their performances were really something very special. Although - similar to my feelings about other stage work - I'm not much of a dance enthusiast, there is a hypnotic rhythm to watching a dancer perform that is unlike any other artform - even singing. It might be the freest form of expression there is - which makes watching someone perform it at times almost as exhilarating.

What most struck me about these films was the time period they came out of. This was the 1950s, the supposed land of conformism. These are our grandparents now, the ones who led an artist's life when being an artist wasn't just another form of commodification, but an active rebellion against the social norms. Sure, being a modern dancer today requires a certain level of sacrifice - mainly because of how many people want to do it and how difficult it is to succeed. But in the 1950s, there wasn't a stepping stone to mainstream acceptance for these dancers. Yes, Graham danced at the White House and the company toured all over the world. But this was a pioneering accomplishment, one that led to the eventual embracing of modern dance within the mainstream art world. I'm not saying that there aren't artists today that challenge our assumptions or work against the mainstream. Rather, I think the very nature of becoming an artist was once social rebellion, but no longer.

Graham's two pieces here are quite impressive. The movement and stark, minimal stage design is immediately modernist, but the pure emotion of both the performances and the music prevent it from feeling dated. Though modern dance has obviously moved even further away from ballet than what is seen here (something Criterion is making more apparent by releasing Pina), this work still feels hyper-relevant and revelatory. Of the two pieces, I definitely liked Appalachian Spring more, both because of Copeland's now-classic score and the lighter (relatively) touch of the story and dancing.

The disc in general is impeccably put-together. Along with the three collaborations Graham did with Kroll, there are a host of extras, most impressively a documentary on Martha Graham made for American Masters and modern-day interviews with many of the dancers who are featured in the films. These people have excellent insights and are a joy to listen to, but they are primarily a reminder of how happy you can be when you follow your bliss. Their demeanors and general nature make it totally apparent. I'm not the audience for this set, so if I can get wrapped up in what's happening, I feel pretty confident that anyone with a passing interest in dance would be enthralled by this underrated and forgotten spine number.

#639: The Qatsi Trilogy

(Godfrey Reggio, 1983-2002)

When it comes out in two weeks, The Qatsi Trilogy will be the second "trilogy of life" that Criterion releases in as many months. The two trilogies are of course totally different, but represent the impressive scope of the Collection - a provocative sex series sits just a handful of films away from a wordless and often human-less documentary set with roughly the same title.

They are hardly worth comparing, but in case anyone was wondering this is certainly the more essential set. In fact, despite its weaker third film and the need to see all three on as big of a screen as possible, this just might be the most essential thing Criterion has released this year - only Godard's Weekend really comes close in terms of pure significance and accomplishment.

Of course, Koyaanisqatsi is the stand-out here, and, while I realize I'm getting all proclaimy up in here, I think it deserves to be considered one of the greatest documentaries ever made. It certainly joins Hoop Dreams, Harlan County U.S.A., and Night and Fog as exemplary offerings from the genre in the Collection. But unlike some other sets where it's a shame that one of the movies is not available on its own, this is a great series to have together. Even if Naqoyqatsi is less effective, it's still an interesting experience, and Powaqqatsi is maybe the most breathtakingly beautiful of the three.

Bottom line if you're considering this set, if you have a great system at home and don't mind sensory experiences outside the conventional narrative framework, this is a no-brainer. Within the larger context of Criterion, this should be a stand-out release in their collection for years to come.

Links to individual reviews:

Koyaanisqatsi
Powaqqatsi
Naqoyqatsi

#642: Naqoyqatsi

(Godfrey Reggio, 2002)

Naqoyqatsi is not worthy of its predecessors, but it's still a beautifully shot and hypnotic film that, like the first two films in the series, couldn't really be more obvious with the point it is making. Created just as Hollywood was shifting into the current CGI-dominated blockbuster age, the film takes a virtual approach to what had previously been a hyper-realistic portrait of our world. This makes the film's subjects quite literally less organic, but also makes the journey less so figuratively. The connection between the three parts feels looser, while the evolution towards the escalation of war in our modern age - and human competition in general - makes the film feel significantly smaller than Reggio's first two films.

Seeing the film now and knowing when it was released, it's impossible not to assume the film was a direct response to 9/11 and the war America waged in its wake (just one at that point, though everyone knew Iraq was coming). However, Reggio had been in production on Naqoyqatsi for some time when the attacks occurred, and their offices were coincidentally located in Manhattan. These events didn't impact the film in any significant ways beyond making it that much more relevant (though there are brief shots of some of the players in American politics), and I don't think the film should be too tightly entwined with the attacks. Like Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi, the film is clearly intended to be a broad critique of civilization and our view of our place in the world.

What really hurts Naqoyqatsi isn't the potentially stale topicality of the film, but the certainly stale technology. No one would be surprised that Koyaanisqatsi was made in the 1980s, but Noaqoyqatsi could have only been made in 2002, at the midway moment when CGI seemed like it was realistic but had not actually reached an acceptable level yet. The movie feels passable during most sequences, but becomes a tech-heavy drag at others where moments in previous installments were left to gaze at the wonder of creation (it doesn't help that Philip Glass's score here is undoubtedly his least invigorating in the series). The most beautiful shots here are not of the Earth - and they certainly aren't of animation - but of humans, Olympic athletes leaping through the air and performing feats of strength. These are impressively filmed, but not what I expect or hope for from a Qatsi film.

I ultimately still enjoyed Naqoyqatsi, but it prevents the trilogy as a whole from being perfect. It might not be as bad as, say, The Godfather III, but that might just be because it doesn't have Sofia Coppola in it, and it has the generally same effect on the series.

#641: Powaqqatsi

(Godfrey Reggio, 1988)

Powaqqatsi is not as much of a cinematic event as its predecessor, but it's every bit as visually stunning and hypnotic. Some of the cinematography is so impressive that it's a wonder how they were able to capture these images so effectively. I watched the film in a fairly strong transfer and one thing is clear: this is going to look INSANE in a Criterion blu-ray release.

Thematically, Powaqqatsi is just as obvious as Koyaanisqatsi, only here the film addresses technology's imposition on traditional cultures in the southern hemisphere. Without Koyaanisqatsi, the film could easily be criticized as exoticizing the native cultures and peoples it depicts. In fact, some of the ideas explored here and the ways in which kids and performers are presented can arguably cross this line anyway. But the care with which Americans were presented in the first film helps inoculate Reggio from many of the criticisms that might make viewing the film more uncomfortable - or at least less innocent.

Ironically, though, just as the comparison exonerates Powaqqatsi, it condemns it as well. The basic shift from a battle between nature and society to one between culture and technology implies a subtle but dangerous equivalency between nature and natives. I think a pretty good case could be made that the film is not able to overcome this fundamental assumption, but I tend to give Reggio credit as a broad thinker who doesn't intend to imply a connection between the two films' explorations of change. I'm also biased because the film is so beautiful and lovingly conveyed that it would seem counterintuitive to come away with anything but the impression that Reggio has the utmost respect for the cultures he depicts here. Perhaps the better case can be made against Reggio's characterization of the chasm between these cultures and "Western" or "Modern" culture than against the dichotomy of nature and man's impact on the world. But that doesn't make the film itself any less impressive - and it might just make it even more thought-provoking.

#640: Koyaanisqatsi

(Godfrey Reggio, 1983)

Koyaanisqatsi is not a subtle film. Anyone who watches it with just a passing interest will get what Reggio is trying to say. But assuming that Koyaanisqatsi is intended to deliver some sort of complex case for a more harmonious relationship with the planet seems to me to miss the greatest accomplishments of the film, which has to be one of the most beautiful, innovative, and awe-inspiring documentaries ever made.

The irony of explaining in words a film that has none is self-apparent - dancing and architecture come to mind. But the film as a cinematic experience can be discussed without much attention paid to its intended political message. Its success in this regard is pretty simple. First, the cinematography is stunning, particularly the time-lapse photography. Try to watch this film casually and not be mesmerized by what's happening on scene. This is inevitably aided by the music, which is perfect and certainly Philip Glass's greatest accomplishment in film. Finally, what Reggio has done with the footage in the editing room is the true work of art that holds the film together. It's pretty much astonishing that this film was created by three people who had never made a feature film before, as this is a master class in shot selection, pacing, editing rhythm, and visual impact.

The only downside of Koyaanisqatsi being released on Criterion is that this film would no doubt be that much more impressive on the big screen. Still, in the age of blu-ray and 46-inch TVs, having this film reach a wider audience will be worth sacrificing a bit of the cinematic impact. This is now one of the essential films in the Collection.

#155: Tokyo Olympiad

(Kon Ichikawa, 1965)

Tokyo Olympiad has been out of print for five years and typically runs you about $200 for a used copy. Even worse, there has been no new release on DVD for western audiences, making this the new Salo (pre-re-release of course) in terms of being nearly impossible to see through any legal means in the US. This is a shame, as it's one of the best sports journalism documentaries I've ever seen.

Choosing Ichikawa to film your Olympics - ostensibly to glorify Japan and its hosting at long last of the grand world games - was certainly an odd choice. It's very nearly like America hiring David Lynch to film the '96 games. Unsurprisingly, the Olympic committee got what they really should have expected, and heavily edited this nearly 3 hour epic to give it a more conventional feel. Criterion's restoration of the original work reveals just what you might expect from Ichikawa: a film much more concerned with the process - the pushing of the human body and mind to excel and how will interacts with physicality - than the outcome of any one sport.

The closest any segments get to a conventional depiction of the competition are the suspenseful pole vault duel that lasts into the night and the much duller women's volleyball face-off in which Japan wins the gold. The latter almost feels like Ichikawa forced it into the film to placate the homers that were looking for a rah-rah moment. The film shines much brighter when zeroing in on a runner's body, shown from the waist up gliding through mid-air, or a rifleman indenting his cheek as he leans over his weapon. These moments attain a sort of elementary beauty that is devoid of the marketing, mythmaking, and over-importance of the typical sports document. Tokyo Olympiad becomes entirely separated from the event it is supposedly depicting - even as the world of 1964 looms large. This is an observation of the diversity of Earth, the breadth of skill and talent we have accumulated, and the remarkable adaptability of the human form. Of the four Ichikawa films in the Collection, I think it's undoubtedly the best, and it's worth seeking out in whatever form you can find it.

#617: And Everything Is Going Fine

(Steven Soderbergh, 2010)

And Everything Is Going Fine is the rare biographical documentary that seems both impressively insightful about its subject and ingeniously constructed. Soderbergh manages to deliver this without shooting a single thing, as all the footage here is from Gray's life and career up until his death in the mid 2000s. In fact, Gray is practically the only person who talks through most of the movie, and the bulk of the film is constructed with Gray's performances on stage (which means this isn't necessarily a complete look at his actual life, but instead a carefully selected approximation of a facsimile - but a cool one).

One really smart choice Soderbergh makes is to tell the story chronologically - not in terms of when the footage was shot, but in terms of when whatever Gray is talking about actually happened in his life. So while the scenes shift from grainy VHS to film to an E! interview, the story goes in a straight line. (By the way, can you imagine someone like Spalding Gray being interviewed on E! today?) This keeps you engaged even as the footage ping pongs around his career.

One thing I didn't know that the film helped me understand was just how revolutionary Gray's act was. It seems like such a simple and natural thing - go on stage and tells unadorned stories about yourself - that you would think people had been doing it forever, and in some ways they were. But reducing it to such a basic equation made his work shockingly fresh. The fact that his perspective was so unique helped prevent others from easily replicating it. Although I already liked Gray thanks to Gray's Anatomy, this documentary made me appreciate him even more, making it a fine companion to that film. That Soderbergh was able to construct such a satisfying documentary makes its separate release justifiable.



A side note: This is the 400th movie I've posted about on this blog. It's been nearly three years since I started this journey (really more since I've been watching Criterion movies for virtually my entire adult life) and I have fewer than 60 movies left. Although this number continues to tick up every month when the new releases are announced, it has steadily decreased to the point where I can genuinely say the end is near. Based on my label count to the left of this post, I've considered 102 of the 400 movies I've reviewed to be "five star" films (this average is a bit inflated by movies I had seen before). Whatever that arbitrary measure is worth, that means just following the spine numbers has led me to more cinematic epiphanies than I could have ever imagined. If anyone is reading this out there, I hope I've pointed you towards something you might not have otherwise picked up that you loved, or at least gave you a different perspective on a movie you like that you hadn't considered. For me personally, the ability to go back and look at my initial thoughts on every film I've watched has been invaluable - this is a collection of writing I'll never stop returning to, and even though I love getting paid cold hard cash to write (ah, sweet cash), this certainly ranks with my books as the most satisfying works I've produced in my life to this point. All I can hope for now is to finally see this thing through to the end - hopefully with at least another 15 or so masterpieces waiting for me!

#256: A Constant Forge

(Charles Kiselyak, 2000)

My Metier, the absorbing documentary covering Carl Th. Dreyer's career, was a little over an hour and a half long. A Constant Forge, covering John Cassavetes's "life and art," is more than twice that length at a full 200 minutes. Although they both made about the same amount of movies, I will admit that the core of Dreyer's career (the films he made from The Passion of Joan of Arc on) consisted of only six movies, while 10 of the 12 films Cassavetes made are considered the meat of his work. But still, even after accounting for Cassavetes's huge position in American independent filmmaking, Dreyer is undoubtedly the more dominant figure in film.

So what necessitates this enormous length, a length longer than any of the director's own films? Not much, in my opinion, other than the desire to cram as much of each interview Kiselyak got into the film. While I appreciate the structure of the documentary, which largely eschews a straight chronological telling of his career, the technique is still extremely conventional, with an assortment of talking heads, clips from his work, various production photos, and only the occasional video footage of Cassavetes working. There is also a voice over of an actor reading Cassavetes's own words. All this makes the movie a Cassavetes-fan-only release, and the full three and a half hours was not easy for me to get through.

Having said that, everything that is covered in the documentary is interesting and insightful with regards to both filmmaking in general and acting specifically (which can also be said of Cassavetes's work itself). And, really, if you're buying a five disc set of Cassavetes's core films, you are pretty much guaranteed to find this documentary to be a valuable addition to the set. So while someone like me - an admirer of Cassavetes who lacks an emotional connection to his films - would find this to be an overlong film with mild appeal, its inclusion in the set is a big plus for anyone who wants to go deeper into the work of one of the major cult figures in American cinema.

#128: Carl Th. Dreyer - My Metier

(Torben Skjødt Jensen, 1995)

My Metier is a mostly straightforward profile on one of the most important filmmakers in history. His life and work are profiled in chronological order, with voiceover of his own writing and various talking heads serving up anecdotes and personal reflections on working with Dreyer. In this regard, it's not much of a film, and entirely forgettable on a technical level.

That said, this is a very well-done version of the respectable television profile. The insights and stories from people who worked with him are funny and engaging, and the story told is informative and useful for understanding Dreyer's relatively small output. Despite the fact that Dreyer's final four films were spread out over more than 20 years, very little of his life outside of these movies is covered, yet the second half of the film is almost entirely dedicated to the three films that accompany this one in Criterion's boxset. This is partially because many of the people who worked with Dreyer on the films were still alive in 1995, whereas his earlier collaborators were long gone, but it's also an indication of just how significant these later works were (and still are) for film to come. In many ways - and despite its clear influences on later movies - silent film as an artform is completed, and can be viewed as a dead and preserved medium. It would be silly to argue that Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc and Vampyr do not continue to influence film to this day, but their overall style and impact are impossible to capture today (Vampyr of course does have some talking, but is mostly silent).

Now, do we see films like Gertrud and Day of Wrath in today's modern American marketplace? No, of course not. But their influence in things like personalized camera technique, heightened reality which veers towards the abstract, and deliberate pacing are evident in arthouse and commercial films alike. Dreyer to this day seems less commercial than even a filmmaker like Bresson, but his films seem both more and less singular in different regards - more in that it is impossible to replicate Dreyer's style, less in that virtually every spiritually minded director seems to have tried. My Metier doesn't break any ground as a film, but it's a vital piece of the puzzle for understanding Dreyer's more earthly achievements, even if the ineffable quality of his work remains a mystery.

#134: Häxan

(Benjamin Christensen, 1922)

It's hard to imagine two more different films featuring the devil than Häxan and the film I watched right before it, The Devil and Daniel Webster (Little Nicky and The Passion of the Christ?), but such is the life of a Criterion completist. Unlike The Devil and Daniel Webster, which is a fairly typical (if upmarket) Hollywood production, Häxan is one of the more interesting movies in the collection. Constructed more as an essay than a narrative film, this silent exploration of witchcraft through the last 1000 years is at once an intriguing use of film to advance an intellectual posture and a supremely pleasing recreation of supernatural moments as they were perceived in history.

Certainly the most entertaining element of the film is the presentation of Satan as a tongue-wagging prankster leading the innocent into the darkness. The devil pops up at the most opportune times, forcing women to do horrible things in the name of evil. The recreations here must have been shocking in 1922, despite the fact that the film implies that its modern era has overcome beliefs in a literal devil that oversees literal witches.

From a current-day perspective, the argument that hysteria is similar to a belief that one was possessed by the devil seems logical but somewhat antiquated - especially since the notion of hysteria itself has long gone out of fashion. Most obviously missing from the film is a feminist perspective on either "medical" movement, a much needed balance to an issue that was directly related to the role of women in society. Still, Häxan is one of the more interesting silent films I have seen, and I'm not surprised that it would amass quite a following among fans of the macabre.

#122: Salesman

(David Maysles, Albert Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin, 1968)

Good lord, what a depressing movie. The Maysles brothers have made a number of other rough films, two of which - Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens - are represented in the collection. But none of the films I've seen from them compare to Salesman, which depicts a group of door-to-door bible salesmen. These men - straight out of Death of a Salesman or Glengarry Glen Ross, only worse - are alternately pathetic and predatory. They live horrible lives barely scraping by in seedy hotel rooms conning poor and ignorant people out of their desperately needed money (the bibles cost around 300 dollars in today's money).

I guess the question to ask would be is it worth it? As a sharp critique of its subject and an examination of American capitalism at a turning point (when this type of con was dying out - it would eventually move to television on infomercials and HSN) the film is quite successful, but as a viewing experience I'm not so sure I would recommend the film. It can be oddly entrancing to watch a man bulldoze a weaker mark right in front of you - and it has the kind of power pieces like the two mentioned above can't produce with fictional situations. However, the train wreck quality of the film is undeniable, making this uneasy viewing for people with a heart. Ultimately, we can all be thankful that this sort of industry is now marginalized if not mostly eliminated (as far as I know), even as people continue to con people out of their money based on their faith. It's hard to imagine anything more cynical, and watching it unfold in front of you isn't exactly an enjoyable experience, regardless of the quality of the work.

#425: Antonio Gaudí

(Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1984)

Criterion says this film is "Less a documentary than a visual poem," and it's not an overstatement - there's barely any dialog or even action throughout its barely feature-length running time. That's ok when the images of the film are works by Gaudí, shot with an enormous amount of reverence and skill by filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara (whose 3-film Criterion boxset I have yet to dive into). I'm not going to go so stereotypical as to say that his presentation has an Eastern austerity, but I do think the way the work is presented gives the impression of an outsider struggling to understand not just an artist's output, but the culture which produced such an artist. There is a love of Gaudí's buildings, but also a sense of mystery and otherness - Teshigahara manages to make his subject exotic without qualifying it as a novelty.

One interesting thing about the film was how little it reminded me of my own first-hand experiences with Gaudí's buildings. Rather than evoke the same emotions I had while traveling through Barcelona, Teshigahara's presentation emphasized the strange and oddly beautiful elements of his work. Rather than simply documenting Gaudí's work, the film was conveying the experience of seeing the buildings that was specific to Teshigahara. This is a sharp reminder of the subjectivity of film and the immense control a filmmaker can have over both his or her subject and the audience.

The 2-disc set has an enormous amount of material surrounding the documentary, including more discussion of Teshigahara's personal experiences around Gaudí's work. This makes the entire set a rich and fascinating look at the crossing point of two artists from different eras, different cultures, and different mediums. The film itself is conversely minimalistic and contained, but through the simple presentation of architectural landmarks, it may speak more to the form than the content.