In 1974, Terence Malick released his first movie : Badlands, the murderous drifting of two juvenile lovers in a deserted and rural America. A rare gem where, if we look back, we can see the seeds of the movies to come.
Four years later, Malick made Days of Heaven. The seeds had grown and sprouted, the harvest was splendid !
1911. Fleeing Chicago after a murder, Bill, Abby and her little sister end up in Texas where they work as farm-workers for a big landowner. This latter falls for Abby, whom he thinks is Bill's sister. They cheat him into marrying her, for profit. But in a love triangle, there's always one too many.
Love story ? Threesome ? Indeed but it's not what the movie is mostly about.
Many films (Giant, for instance) have set up a love story in the great plains. This time, we could almost say the pretext is the romance, a background, whereas the real topic and guideline is the countryside and its seasons.
Very few, if any, film director have filmed not only time but the weather itself and the rythm of nature. Malick is a pantheist. Time unfolds, seasons pass, the wheat grows and it's a splendor. He manages to render the changing of light thrilling. How many directors have filmed, really filmed the sky, the clouds ? For Malick, a coming storm is an event as well as an aesthetic emotion. A sunset, the wind, the heat become worth beholding ; The poet W.H. Auden once wrote : « Teach the free man to praise ». Malick meets this challenge and helps us really see nature as a fascinating, living creature.
A great mansion that the endless horizon outlines becomes the door to limitless possibilities.
We think to American painters, to Edward Hopper and his houses of great solitude, to Andrew Wyeth and the almost magical strangeness of rural dayly life, Christina's World in particular. A plague of grasshoppers is as beautiful as Turner's paintings. Ennio Morricone's music comes unexpectedly to enhance all these memorable pictures.
But, if Malick is a pantheist, he is also a christian and knows his bible by heart. The aforesaid plague of grasshoppers heralds a tragic end. The worm is in the fruit. Every garden of eden host the coming fall. In Malick's movies, man is always expelled from the beauty of the garden, but it's rather a matter of destiny than of fate.
Let's not spoil the end.
Let's just say that Malick's movie is not just a collection of nice pictures. It is lyrical, solar and elegiac.
If you let yourself drift, if you are not scared of the wind and the snow, great emotions await you.
lezard's Reviews
Displaying Review 46 - 50 of 52 in total
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After watching Tenet, I am quite puzzled. It's not a bad movie. It's well directed, has its peak moments, operatic and virtuosic. The actors do a really good job.
Then where does my feeling come from, this feeling that the movie will vanish from my memory like the scent of good coffee while you move away from the roaster?
First of all, the plot. It is interesting, even a bit fascinating. A little bit less, though, if you are used to reading scifi novels. Plus, in a novel you can always reread the complex passages. Here, the start is teasing but it becomes so increasingly tangled that you are lost.
And the worst part is: you are lost and you don't care, not anymore than you care about the fate of the characters, because (and this is the second reason) Nolan, if he masters action and can direct a war scene like a ballet director, can't depict real characters. Do we believe in the budding love story? Do we care about the friendship between the two male characters? It could, should be moving but is awkward. We don't even see the kid who is at the centre of an emotional balckmail! Nolan is too focused on his obsession for time to take the time to render his characters interesting. In all his films, he lacks empathy, just like Martin Scorcese (a giant!) can't shoot a sex scene.
The result is, after some time, we are lost in the labyrynth and don't know or care who dies. Just like in Inception, we feel we are in a video game, a giant Call of Duty, where the hero always has as many lives as he wants. The problem being that when or if the hero dies, who cares? It's just a game.
If Nolan, like in many movies, could go back in time, he would learn that characters are the key, not CGI! And would maybe avoid making the same mistake again.My third reason is: it is way too talkative and thus loses a part of the possible secrecy, mystery and even poetry that it could convey. Watch what Tarkovski, in Stalker can do on the topic of distorted time, future, past, destiny, irridiated zones! Watch and listen! Silence can be so effective!
My fourth: It is way too long! Again, there are good ideas. Connecting the "reconcialition" of Kat and Andrei (fantastic Kenneth Brannagh!), their possible hug and kiss to the explosion of a bomb is seducing. But again too long full of useless dialogues and not surprising because we expect the end. In Touch of Evil, Orson Welles did the same in 3,12 minutes, with three words of dialogue and it was mindblowing, a masterpiece of a scene!
Finally, Nolan misses talking about cinema. Indeed, in the movie the characters live the same events differently (Edge of Tomorrow already developped the idea). They change angles, point of view, perspectives, confront themselves. Well Nolan could have realised that this is precisely what cinema and actors do, all the time!
I still watch Nolan movies but always ends up being disappointed, as if Nolan was not following a scenario but fulfilling a programme.
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«Broken Arrow», the first western movie by Delmer Daves, was released in july 1950. In september came «Devil's Doorway», the first western by Anthony Mann.
Coincidence ?
Something was in the air and the genre was ready for a new approach of the Amerindians.
D. Daves had already made 11 movies (remember Dark Passage?). He had lived with the native Americans when he was 22 and with his new film he wanted to change the audience's opinion about them.
He chose James Stewart, a very popular actor, who had never played in a western before.
The scene is set in Arizona where most of the movie was shot. Tom Jeffords, a former soldier fed up with the war is meant to promote peace between the US cavalry and the Apaches, led by Cochise. A very trivial plot : a conflict between the whites and the Indians. But this time, the story is seen from an Indian point of view. Daves wants to show the Indians, not as the stereotype portrayed them (blood-thirsty savages), but as a people with a culture, traditions and a vision of the world.
Tom, during his mission, falls for Sonseeaharay, an Indian girl.
Symbollically, the movie starts with the discovery of a young Indian, wounded. The Amerindians were at that time in a « bad shape » indeed : acculturated, plagued by alcoholism, disease, lacking education and jobs. They were litterally a dying people.
Tom doesn't like the Indians but he cures the boy. To his surprise, he discovers he has a mother who is crying out of anxiety. After all these people could be human ! On his way to the boy's tribe he meets a bunch of them, on an avenging raid against cowboys.
Throughout the first part of the movie, through Tom's look, we discover a way of life, rituals, a whole culture, a language. Like him the spectator can feel empathy for these people and when Tom falls in love, like many Americans, we think of John Smith and Pocahontas. Dave's tone is lyrical, the characters are sincere, the sceneries are beautiful and enhance the love story. Beauty is always contagious.
At the center of the story, the topic of trust and of the word given. A classic in many westerns : the treaty, which is quite ironical when you know that 400 treaties were signed in the 19th century... and the white man didn't respect ANY OF THEM (source:Howard Zinn).
We discover that the Indians fight but not out of savagery. Just to defend their land and a cause. The savages are the whites who want to lynch Tom, who speak of treason and betrayal, out of sheer hatred and who eventually kill love.
Cochise, for his part is the figure of the wise man.
We can notice that in the 50's (great period of segregation), a love story between a white man and an Indian woman was tolerated. But we must add that the story only works...if the Indian girl dies. We can see this in « Distant Drums », by R. Walsh, « Across the Wild Missouri », by W. Wellman and « Last Train from Gunhill », by J. Sturges, among others.
Dave manages to show the Indians people with dignity, pride, and humane values.
The movie was a great success and Daves shot quite a few other westerns (remember 3:10 to Yuma?). -
In september 1950, «Devil's Doorway», the first western by Anthony Mann came out. «Broken Arrow», the first western movie by Delmer Daves, had been released in july.
Coincidence ?
Something was in the air and the genre was ready for a new approach of the Amerindians.When Anthony Mann was given the script of the movie, he said it was the best he had ever read. He had already shot numbers of films noirs, nervous, violent and efficient. « Devil's Doorway » was his first western, shot in black & white.
Robert Taylor, a great star of that time, embodied Lance Poole, a Shoshone Indian. After having gained the « medal of honor », the highest distinction in the US cavalry, Lance comes back to Wyoming (which in 1868 had just joined the Union). He is an idealist who dreams of expending his ranch, Sweet Meadows, and living in peace and harmony, helping his tribe.
When he meets his father, they speakke Shoshone (contrary to the Indians in « Broken Arrow, by D . Daves). Then he meets Coolan in a saloon. This latter is filmed in the first ground, which is symbolic of racism as the first obstacle. In Mann's movies, antagonisms are immediate, violent. He hates Indians because « they stink » and have nothing to do in the army. He will do everything to disposess Lance of his ranch, using legal means.
For, the « superiority » of Mann's movie, compared to Dave's, is that while Daves sets the problem in sentimental terms (The love of Tom Jeffords for Sonseeharay), Mann shows the problem lies in the law itself. Discrimination doesn't depend on people (the good or bad ones) but is imbedded in mentalities and is even one of the basis of the foundation of the nation. In Dave's « Broken Arrow », it's the white who is an idealist. In « Devil's doorway, it's the Indian who naively believes in the spirit of justice of white people. In Daves later movies homesteaders fight Indians for a piece of land. In Mann's movies, they fight them because they're inferior. Period !
In a wonderful and powerful scene, Mann's evokes life in the reservations and shows a dying people, locked, neglected, forgotten and killed.
Lance has to defend himself and chooses a lawyer...who happens to be a woman. It's a brilliant idea which shows that a discrimination can hide another : sexism and racism walk hand in hand !
An untold, budding love story unfolds, but of course is never achieved. It is an inverted picture of « Broken Arrow »'s love story and is really thrilling because it is so subversive. Indeed, if Tom can hug, kiss Sonseeharay in the open and get married, the love between Lance and Orrie Masters(what a name!) can't be tolerated or even imagined and told because it is the supreme taboo : « Don't touch the white woman ! » For she is the symbol of the « purity » of the white race. Orries says ; « In a hundred years, it could have worked. ». It's far too optimistic and Mann knows this well. Let's just remind that, nowadays, the rate of « mixed marriages » in the U.S.A doesn't exceed 3% !!
Orrie and Lance will be powerless against the law and Lance will have to fight and to die to keep what is his, while Coolan, the racist bastard will be helped by the US army, in the name of the law and of « The Manifest Destiny ». What is legal is not always fair !
« We're all gone ! » says Lance while dying. A bitter and lucid statement.
Mann's movie is shocking, disturbing and powerful. No wonder it met with little success. The audience preferred « Broken Arrow », a good optimistic movie which left their conscience at peace.
The Devil's Doorway is clearly for the Indians. The Sweet Meadows, the stolen land is for the whites, if they can forget, which they did in no time.
And when, in the 60's western movies « Soldier Blue » or « Little Big Man ») (began to really describe what conquest was like, the genre nearly died because nobody wanted to see and hear the truth.
As a coincidence, an other movie set In Wyoming, dealt with a doorway or rather a gate. « Heaven's gate », this masterpiece by M. Cimino showed this time white people slaughtering other whites, for the sake of profit which was even more shocking than just slaughtering the Indians out of racism. Of course the movie was an even bigger failure. -
1963.
Dino Risi at his best. In two years he shot six (!) movies, among which masterpieces such as « Il sorpasso » and « Una vita difficile ».
In 20 sketches, Risi reinvented Italian comedy : social criticism, political satire, caricature.
But first of all, it's great cinema : b&w cinemascope, two fantastic actors, a precise, powerful and efficient script. Risi hits the bull's eye with an exhilarating cruelty.
Every aspect of Italian life is dealt with: religion, politics, justice, police, sport, the rich and poor, cinema, culture and family.
What can then be saved in this general monstrosity ? Laughter, vitality, an extraordinary lucidity and talent of course. We wish we could see so much lucidity and humour about today's Italy.It starts with a father. He is joyful, sympathetic but is also a thief, a cheater and a free-rider. But you are a father only if you have a son, and this son is so well advised by his father that he will kill and rob him. It is biting, cruel and funny. Needless to summon Freud to understand that a father's murder as a prologue can't be innocent . We can, on the other hand, remember another father, another son, another theft. The theft of a bicycle, to be specific, for Risi knows his masters (I was about to say his fathers).
The film then unfolds a cast of « monsters » who are all so humane. Risi, in his circus, depicts a carnivorous and fascinating society where everybody can spot a familiar character. And because it is deeply Italian, it becomes profundly universal.The movie ends up with a punch drunk boxer (and spectator). It is a cruel tale of our pettiness. Under this vitriolic vision, the burnt flesh of man, what is left of us on a beach when we are alone and everything has faded away, childhood's kites, the salted water of melancholy.
The Italian society of 1963 could logically seem unattractive, doomed to machism and general spinelessness. Monstrous then ?
As Orson Welles used to say in « The Third Man », by Carol Reed : « In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, democracy and peace. What was then produced ? The cuckoo clock ! ».
Well, in 1963 Italy, they had Fellini, Visconti, Antonioni, Pasolini, Bolognini, de Sica, Rossellini, Germi, Emmer, Zurlini, Rosi, Pietrangelli, Monicelli, Comencini, Scola and many others.Forza Italia !
