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lezard's Reviews

Displaying Review 31 - 35 of 52 in total

  • Written by lezard on 07.01.2022

    When Ghost Dog was released in 1999, Jim Jarmusch had already shot 6 fiction movies and a documentary. From the start he had a very distinctive style.

    A few guidelines :
    Unusual characters, loners and mavericks.
    Unforgettable soundtracks.
    A fantastic, almost anachronistic, use of black and white
    A laid back rythm.
    An off-beat, often irresistible, humour.

    With Ghost Dog, Jarmusch tackles a new genre, film moir, and paradoxically uses color.
    A hitman, Forest Whitaker, aka Ghost Dog, is an adept of the samourais' code of honor. He is devoted to a mafiosi because this one once saved his life. After a contract, which goes wrong, he becomes the mob's target.
    This is a movie about transfer, about the confrontation between the ancient and the modern, about the consciousness of history. As such it will please the movie buffs through the numerous references to many classics (Kurosawa, Kazan, Suzuki for instance), but don't worry ! If you don't know the classics your pleasure won't be lessened. Whether you spot them or not these references are part of the main theme: memory and tradition.
    No modernity is possible without the knowledge of the past. Those (the wisemen) who treat the blacks, the Indians as primitives are so ignorant and stupid that it's a great source of fun.
    Forest Whitaker is great. Like many of Jarmusch « heroes », he drifts, most of the time silent, on a great urban soundtrack composed by RZA. As a swinging shadow, wearing hoodies or suits he is a creature of the night and melts in the shade.
    Solitary by character, outsider by necessity he seldom befriends people, except excentrics like him.
    A great moment of fun, intelligence and emotion.
    This movie confirms the Jarmusch's touch : elegance and delicacy.

  • Written by lezard on 09.01.2022

    Douglas Sirk, a Danish director who first settled in Germany before coming to the USA, can be regarded as a master of melodrama. To be convinced you can watch « Magnificent Obsession » «  All That Heaven Allows » and «Written on the Wind », all of which are great movies.
    In 1959, he released « Imitation of Life », his swan-song and a peak of the genre. It is a remake of the 1935 eponymous movie by John M Stahl, another German born director who shot the flamboyant « Leave her to Heaven », probably the first film noir in color.
    The movie tells the story of Lora (lana Turner) who starts from scratch and gets to the top, sacrificing her love life. She is helped by Annie, a black woman that she hosts. Annie is a nanny, a secretary, a maid, a cook. They are both widows and have a daughter.
    It's one more time the old from rags to riches and fame story but, this time it's about self-made women. The feminine incarnation of the American Dream and the specific problems it causes. The film plays on pairs : mother/daughter, black/white, rich/poor.
    Let's not forget it's a melodrama. The spectator is moved, cries, heartbreaking scenes follow one another. Nevertheless, what Sirk tells us about America, about everyday racism, about social classes, very few « serious » movies dealt with it.
    Sirk carries the genre to a boiling point. Lyricism and colors litterally explode, as well as a social and racial violence (at a time of Civil Rights Movement) rarely shown in cinema.
    Beautiful America smiles with shining white teeth, the citizens are well dressed, well trimmed and combed, but you can see the knives behind the smiles. The beauty of Sirk's melodrama is that they are hyperrealistic and become bigger than life. His use of colors emphasizes the drama. Almodovar, among others, will remember the lesson.
    At the heart of the story is the very American problem of the « white negroes », embodied by Sarah Jane. It is indeed very American to ignore the notion of « métis ». You are black or white, period. And what tells you who you are is not the color of your skin, but the blood in your veins. One drop and you're black and treated as such. Puritan obsession of a so-called purity.
    Sarah Jane faces a real dilemma : should she deny her mother and have a chance to succeed or reveal who she is and see every door shut in her face ?*
    The film is also remarkable because it's about women, and strong women. Men are merely extras. A female and black America, this was unusual at that time.
    There are sometimes silly laughters and clever tears. Let's cry intelligently and watch « Imitation of Life ».

    *if you are interested in the problem of « white negroes » you must watch « Band of Angels » by Raoul Walsh and « colors » by John Casavetes and read Kate Chopin's marvelous short story « Désiré's Baby ».

  • Written by lezard on 10.01.2022

    Through the window-pane, she is waiting. She imagines his look and his body.
    Through the gate, through the bars, he speaks to her, dreams her, rails against her.
    Through the night, he speaks to death, summons the shadows.
    Through time, he bumps into walls, blows, the skips of memory.
    Through life they love each other, like lovers do.
    Through another body they love each other differently.
    Through the South they wander, they continue the work of living and saying goodbye to the departing.
    Through the window-pane he comes, to shut exile, and open desire again.

  • Written by lezard on 10.01.2022

    A child's voice hums as his hand opens a box. Bird's eye view. We discover a pen, charcoal, a marble, a key, coins, a little knife, a watch. The hand takes the charcoal and begins to write and draw. The title and the credits list unfold, still on a carefree tune and then a beautiful melody. The watch, though it has no hand, begins an imaginery tick. Time and the story can start.
    A beautiful start which turns trifles into treasures and the world into a place where you can marvel. The place here is Maycomb, Alabama at the time of segregation. The movie is adapted from the best seller by Harper Lee, 1961 Pulitzer prize.
    The great depression. Atticus Finch, a lawyer raises his two kids alone : Scout (Jean Louise) and Jem (Jeremy). The story is told from Scout's point of view and reports a summer when the two children are going to discover the hidden face of the small village and the South, segregation, on the occasion of Tom Robinson's trial.
    It is a movie about silence, a silence which is in fact a lie. Silence about racism, about « different » people, about the unspeakable desires which, if they were revealed would blow this little world apart. There's also the scaring and delicious silence of the night in which children imagine things. In these silences are shadows.
    It is an initiatory story in which Scouts discovers some truth in an atmosphere which reminds Twain's Mississippi and Davis Grubbs ' Night of the Hunter. Carelessness, innocence and terror.
    After the arrival of a third kid, innocent games and the excitment of the hidden monster, Bo Radley, comes the trial. Reality slowly breaks into the children's universe. Their look on the adult world is a denunciation in itself and doesn't need words or speeches.
    The final scene, during a windy Halloween night is tipycally Southern Gothic, It is set in a forest, a place which was traditionally an outlet of fear and passions and fantasy in which man confronts the beast. As usual, the monsters are not those we expected.
    A great simple movie. Gregory peck does a good job, as always but the young Mary Badham is a prodigy. Her talent and authenticity shine and illuminate the screen.
    A great classic !

  • Written by lezard on 20.03.2022

    While good movies are fortunately still made, I must admit too many new films make me wonder: "All this (special effects, billions of dollars, great actors...) for that result?".
    Waching "Kapurush" by Satyajit Ray the other day made me marvel at just the opposite:"How can you make so much with so little?"
    Extreme simplicity is a difficult art, only achieved by the greatest directors (Ford, Ozu...). When this simplicity is blended with delicacy, intimacy we reach story-telling and cinema at their best.

    On his way to Calcutta, a screenwriter's car breaks down in a small town. He has to spend the night there and is accommodated out of the blue by a well-to-do local tea-planter, a somewhat friendly but also bitter kind of a man.
    At this latter's home he is welcomed by the man's wife. Stunning surprise, she is Karuna, his student days' old flame. At that time, he let her down in painful circumstances, thus showing his cowardness. With years, he has understood that she was his one true love and he now thinks a new opportunity is given him by fate to make it up to her and win her back. But things are a bit more complex.
    In 69 minutes (one night, one day), Satyajit Ray manages to make us understand the inner turmoil of both characters, the complexity and intensity of their feelings, the passing of time, the unavoidable consequences of our acts and choices. Flash backs are short, efficient, moving like any confrontation with what was, but also what could have been.

    Akira Kurosawa once said:"Not having seen a movie by Satyajit Ray is like never having seen the moon or the sun." I guess he was right. Don't be afraid to be moon or sunstruck, watch Kapurush!

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