Sight and Sound 2022 Round 8: 201-220

It won't play.

All About Eve vs. Paris is Burning vs. Pink Flamingos vs. Suspiria is the kind of gay cinephile heaven that can only end in a landslide Dr. Strangelove victory

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER (Sara Gómez; 1977)

Watched this recently. It's an interesting film,made up of these fragments of narrative adding up to something almost essay-like.

Only one winner though:

WAVELENGTH (Michael Snow; 1967)

Still haven't watched it.

Add Wavelength and L'Eclisse to the four titles I mentioned above, and that's what fighting for my vote

All About Eve
Suspiria
Paris is Burning
In a Lonely Place
L'Eclisse
Duck Soup

Watched Brief Encounter again a few years ago, the emotions involved and the way they were expressed were so alien to me that I just felt nothing. Suspect this may have something to do with being married to someone who (correctly) believes repressing moreorless anything is just wrong and pointless.

Gah, forgot In a Lonely Place. (Pretty amazing group here, Deer Hunter and Army of Shadows aside.)

On the contrary: Brief Encounter makes repression look sexy (also: repression saved them from a likely ridiculous affair).

Not seen:

Only interested in the Barnet (maybe Flamingos but I kind of know what the deal is)

BY THE BLUEST OF SEAS (Boris Barnet; 1936)
DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (Stanley Kubrick; 1964)
DUCK SOUP (Leo McCarey; 1933)
PINK FLAMINGOS (John Waters; 1972)

xp I liked it the first time I saw it, many years before, but somewhere in the middle I somehow lost my ability to feel anything for these characters. If the moral is "life's too short to be English" then I'm fully behind it.

I'll settle for "Life's too short to fuck Trevor Howard."

Brief Encounter is about Romance, not sex.

The British don't fuck.

The "you came back to me" ending always struck me as the romantic equivalent of the end of those WB gangster films where Cagney or Robinson go down in a hail of bullets - it's not what the audience wants, it's not what the film's creators want, but it's what the moral codes of the time demanded and so that's how they had to go.

I love Army Of Shadows a lot, it's imo the best illustration of how nasty guerrila warfare has to be, even when done for an undeniably worthy cause. The ending narration is like a Donald Westlake novel in how matter-of-fact it is about the character's fates.

Limite is not really my kind of thing but it's enormously impressive and anyone interested in silent film should def check it out.

Need to give In A Lonely Place a rewatch; it seems to have weathered the changes in sensibility over the last few decades very well...as an impressionable twentysomething I probably projected more sympathy towards Bogart's character than the film is suggesting, maybe?

Probably gonna vote Uncle Boonmee.

A few I like, but not one I unreservedly love at the present moment.

Duck Soup or Boonmee

Tree of Life is the one of the ones I've seen that I just couldn't get into at all.

I keep imagining Groucho and Harpo stumbling into it.

Haven't seen six of these.
In earlier years I may have said Strangelove or Eclisse, but now I feel like Zama is taking up the most space in my memories. It won the poll at TIFF of the films of the 10s and was a great choice.
In other Martel observations, Headless Woman is maybe the best film where nothing happens since Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick.
Didn't really get anything out of Suspiria. The most memorable aspect of In a Lonely Place is the set.

I feel like Pink Flamingos had the biggest impact on the way I see cinema and what is allowed to be art, so it has to be that.

I feel like Zama is taking up the most space in my memories. It won the poll at TIFF of the films of the 10s and was a great choice

Film Comment's poll too: https://www.filmcomment.com/best-films-of-the-decade/

Zama vs By The Bluest Of Seas for me. Really need to watch Headless Woman but holding out for a film society screening.

Bogie over Kubrick, the Marx Bros, and Divine.

either paris is burning or the deer hunter

Zama for me, with a very close second being Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

I really liked Dario Argento's Suspiria, but thought Luca Guadagnino's 2018 reimagining of it was even better

Jean-Pierre Melville has to be the lead talented French filmmaker of the most important time period for French filmmaking

Least talented … but also leaden in talent

Wow, One Way or Another is fantastic! But I'll still probably vote for Zama.

The Tree of Life is the last movie I walked out on. The reported 5-hour director's cut strikes me as a crime against humanity.

I didn't dislike it as a minute-by-minute viewing experience, but the gap between what it was trying to do and what it was accomplishing was wide. I think a lot of directors have stumbled when they decided they could make a film that encompasses "everything" and dispense with simpler pleasures.

I saw BRIEF ENCOUNTER for the first time about a year or so ago, having waited to see it because I figured it would be exactly the sort of movie I usually love. maybe I set my expectations too high, but it didn’t move me like I assumed it would — just didn’t really buy the chemistry. it was nice though, I can still picture the train station bar in my mind, that was a really memorable set piece. but if I want a repressed love story I’d probably reach for LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON (rohmer) or IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE

I do love that ZAMA’s reputation seems to be steadily growing. pretty sure I was the first ilxor to rave about it

or Before Sunrise in the same vein.

[spoilers redacted]

a preface: I don’t think the comments I’m going to make about Zama are spoilers, the film is way too abstruse for that

I wrote about this before, that there were a lot of strange events in that film that were seemingly random but also very memorable and which lended weight to the idea of it being a ghost story.

for example, the people in a secret room crowded around a sanadora who is smoking a cigar and performing an arcane healing ritual, the scene in a crypt where lyme is being dropped over the dead body of el oriental, the moment featuring the gobernador who is fondling what he thinks are the dried up ears of Vicuña Porto which were supposedly cut off before his execution, the ghost hotel that Zama stays at on the outskirts of the town, the sisters who keep appearing before him, the boy who comes into the film occasionally to take stuff, the ostriches and llamas in the background

It is on the surface a story about bureaucratic layers, class conflicts, and colonialism, but then on a more personal level about the degradation, dead-ends, and shame that Zama experiences in his attempts to get transferred away from his remote outpost in Argentina. His circumstances are a sad simulacrum of an elegant European lifestyle, both humorous and depressing

The whole movie, especially the ending, is very surreal and somewhat reminiscent of Herzog, with local people eventually kidnapping him in the wilderness and taking charge of his fate

Zama the movie and novel are wonderful.

That aspect of the ending also reminds me of The Sheltering Sky.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Almost voted for The Deer Hunter because parts of it are amazing and it will get zero votes, but I'll go with L'eclisse for the ending and for Monica Vitti.

Voted for Zama. Lucrecia Martel is so great.

Same. Zama is easily top ten of that decade for me.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Not surprised after the last half dozen posts, or so.

voted All About Eve but feel like watching Zama again now because I liked it the time and watched it twice. But am just remembering imagery and vibes rather than details.

BY THE BLUEST OF SEAS (Boris Barnet; 1936)

This is a beautiful gem of a film. The shots of the sea and beaches are so wonderful. The sea is a character in the film.

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER (Sara Gómez; 1977)

Also now seen this, a while back.

Can't be arsed with Kubrick, and couldn't finish Duck Soup so only Pink Flamingos left