Movies are the easiest art form to catch up on. If I decide I want to read one of the many classics I’ve neglected (Moby Dick, Remembrance of Things Past, etc.), it’s a pretty major commitment. Even at the rate I read, we’re talking about a couple of weeks. On the other hand, if you want to see what the fuss is about this Ozu guy that all the cinemaphiles always yammer on about, you’re about ninety minutes away from knowledge.
Well, you are now. Thanks to Netflix. We all like to wring our hands about how technology has de-humanized us, but that’s only because some of the miracles it has brought now seem utterly mundane. If you had told any film student up to 1990 about Netflix – how you could basically have the entire history of cinema delivered to your door (often letterboxed, digitally re-mastered, and with commentary) for about $15 a month, their head would have exploded. Yet this is how we live now. We’ve come to expect it. We’re even annoyed that we have to wait a few days for those non-streamable titles to appear at our door.
First I set up a few ground rules. I was doing this for my pleasure, so there would be no guilt-watching. None of this “but-everyone-says-it’s-a-masterpiece-so-I’ll-keep-watching” stuff. If I didn’t like it, I’d turn it off. I also vowed to stop whenever I got tired, which meant watching even short movies in several sections. Not ideal viewing circumstances to be sure, but since I would never see these films otherwise, I figured seeing them this way was better than not seeing them at all.
My cinematheque got off to a rousing start. I was reading a book about eastern Europe when I noticed that this film, Ashes and Diamonds, kept coming up. A quick google-search revealed that Ashes and Diamonds was on both Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola’s all-time top 10 list (as noted in Sight & Sound, http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/critics/). That was more than enough for me to check it out. And when I did…
Well, I’m not a great gusher. When I start to talk about how much I love something it usually ends up in a 30-car pile up of adjectives (“Brilliant! Amazing! Staggering! Magnificent!”). Suffice it to say, Ashes and Diamonds may well be on my all-time top 10 list. From a place I knew nothing about, from a group of people I knew nothing about, elaborating a history I knew next to nothing about, came this singular, magnificent work of art. What a gift.
I was so in love with it I saw three other films by the same director, Andrzej Wajda: Kanal, A Generation, and Katyn. All excellent, but none the equal of Ashes and Diamonds.
My enthusiasm for Ashes and Diamonds led to a spirited dialogue with fellow Extra Criticum writer David Licata, who suggested other eastern European films such as Cranes Are Flying and Closely Watched Trains. Cranes Are Flying, while gorgeously made, is a little Stalinist for my taste (in the end the protagonist frees herself from the decadent artist and embraces Mother Russia). Closely Watched Trains, on the other hand, is amazing. A story about a boy working in a Czechoslovakian train station in World War II, it is bizarrely funny and soaked in sex. There is a scene where a man seduces a woman by stamping train destinations up her leg that is one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen. There is also a scene where the boy visits an old peasant woman and complains of his virginity while she sensually strokes a goose’s blatantly phallic neck. As soon as he leaves, she chops that neck with a cleaver. Extraordinary, strange, wonderful movie.
Having done my time in eastern Europe, I decided to check out some from the greats that I had missed. I watched Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, and fell in love with him all over again. There is something about French New Wave movies that just hits me where I live. The way they bounce between tragedy and burlesque, lowbrow and high; the way tears and snorting laughter sit comfortably side by side. It might be the biggest single influence on the tone of my writing. It is what I aspire to in all my work.
Next I went on to Bergman. There’s scene in Woody Allen’s Manhattan that encapsulates my feeling about Bergman exactly. Woody is describing Bergman as the cinema’s only true genius when Diane Keaton bursts in and says, “God, it’s so bleak! …I mean, I loved it when I was at Radcliffe, but you outgrow it.” This is supposed to reveal how neurotic and superficial Diane Keaton’s character is. The thing is, I kind of agree with her. Actually, I agree with both of them. Bergman at his greatest is as great as movies get. At his worst he makes me want to stick my head in a wood-chipper.
The first Bergman in my cinematheque was Wild Strawberries. I heard of this as one of his “humane”classics, which made me think I’d like it. The beginning was not promising: a gloomy, symbol-laden dream. I warmed more to the film as it went on, but I never quite fell in love until the last moment.
In the last scene the protagonist, an eminent professor in his 70s, crawls into bed. In a voice over, we hear his thoughts. He says that before he goes to sleep, he likes to think of something that makes him feel safe. The last image of the movie is the professor as a small boy. We see him coming up over a ridge. He sees his parents picnicking off in the distance. His oarents see him and wave. Fade to black.
It is such a subtle and gorgeous moment, made of such a small thing - seeing your parents, having them wave to you. 70 years later this is what the professor needs to get to sleep. It made me think of my own parents, and of who I am to my son, Henry. I’ll never forget that image.
The second Bergman I chose was Summer With Monika. It is an early movie, almost like a Bergman studio film, with a more conventional story and less artistic obsessions. It is also, not to put too fine a point on it, hot. It shows the jaw-droppingly sexy 19-year-old Harriett Andersson in all her glory as the libidinous title character (the film was actually cut to 55 minutes and released as an exploitation film in America under the title Monika – Bad Girl!). It is also a beautiful story of young love, gorgeously shot, and stylistically fascinating. You see Bergman trying effects he would fully flesh out in later films. A lovely film.
The final film I am going to talk about is Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, which I was basically guilted into seeing by the aforementioned David Licata. Tarkovsky is reputed to be one of the giants of cinema. His films litter the top 10s of just about every major critic and director. I, however, felt differently. I saw his movie Stalker when I was 16 and thought it the most maddeningly pretentious and mind-bogglingly boring movie ever made. So I set myself as an anti-Tarkovsky guy (amongst the small group of my friends that care about that sort of thing). But David was persistent – Why not give it a try? You can always turn it off. Eventually, I relented.
Here’s the problem with examining your prejudices – sometimes you find that you’re wrong. Tarkovsky will never be my favorite (I have too much PT Barnum in me for that), but Andrei Rublev is stunning. You have to be a clod not to recognize it. The world it creates, on a huge canvas with absolutely effortless ease, is so vivid and particular I don’t know if it will ever leave me. I actually feel like I have some idea what it was like to live in 16th century Russia – what it meant to be a person then, what the world looked like, and felt like. The images and the stories are so extraordinary.
Being a Tarkovsky-hater was fun (I’m a bit of a contrarian), but we all grow up. He was a brilliant. Even I can see that.
My wife’s understudy job recently ended, and I’ve also started writing again (obviously). My time is pretty filled up. I’m not sure if my cinematheque will continue. We’ll see. Either way, it was pretty awesome while it lasted.
