Remaking Films Across Langauge Lines

When I saw Infernal Affairs it was the first time I'd seen a non-English language film knowing that there was a remake and thinking that if I was only going to see one it might have been a better idea to see Hollywood's version (Scorsese's The Departed). There's no doubt that Infernal Affairs effectively milks its ostensibly ludicrous premise for enough tension to give you hypertension and that Tony Leung Chiu-Wai is as terrific as ever. However the dialogue is rarely more than functional (or, at least, the subs are), the women are never more than plot/thematic devices (an issue somewhat fixed by the sequal) and the slow-mo black and white flashbacks are often either cloying or unnecessary. These are all areas in which it is often said that the Scorsese version excels: there's a lot of talk about its colourful Boston slang, Vera Farmiga is apparently given a chance to shine and well, Scorsese is Scorsese.

A Wildly Over-Ambitious and Under-Thought Post on Pina

The question that is often asked of performance films is why people shouldn't just trundle along to the live show. Notwithstanding the difficulties of seeing one of Pina Bausche's routines live, unless one lives in the right cities or has some cash to burn, the answers given by Wender's Pina is that cameras offer you a multitude of perspectives that you would never have from a static seat in a theatre, that you can experience radical, astonishing violations of space and time, and that he can build fluid, nested narratives.

Booyah!

I'd heard rumors that 13 Assassins was going to bypass theaters and go straight to DVD in Australia but a quick look at Icon's site today turned up this "…and stay tuned for an announcement of the Australian cinema release date". Now I just have to hope it arrives before or after my overseas jaunt.

An Architecture of Loss: Liverpool

I went into Liverpool fearing an "unmediated slab of quotidian reality"* and hoping for an Uncle Boonmee-like revelatory experience. What I actually experienced was something that, while not reaching (or to be fair even grasping) for Boonmee's intense mysticism, imparted a not dissimilar sense of a regrettable past embedded in the present. Unlike Boonme the loss is etched in run down, occasionally skeletal, buildings and faces. Lisandro Alonso finds a great deal of pathos in simply placing his prodigal son in what were clearly once familiar surrounds and people, or in quietly evoking the wider world outside of the small, isolated village.

Despite this I didn't find it an entirely gratifying experience. Alonso's use of non professionals ensures some very restrained performances which occasionally become flat. It's probable that this hyper-naturalism is exactly what Alonso was hoping to achieve but for me, raised on traditional acting, the ability to read the tiniest flickers of emotion in the actor's faces was missing and I couldn't stop thinking about how the film might have played with someone like Samantha Moreton in the lead.

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*This wonderful phrase is stolen from Shane Danielsen who deployed it in his critique of Joe Swanberg. His piece is here.

A Short Note on Incendies

Incendies has the one thing I prize in cinema above all else: a director with a strong personal style who can tailor it to the subject matter at hand.  Unfortunately Denis Villeneuve's style is deployed in the service of a pot-boiler of a story. At first it's merely forgettable stuff: a mechanistic cycle of violence told through the prism of a straightforward detective story in which neither the detective nor her quarry emerge as anything more than plot tokens. But by the time it piles on its last lurid, contrived twist it becomes truly risible: an art house exploitation film in which the most painful, improbable scenario its makers could contrive is made palatable through an ostensibly laudable, yet astonishingly wrong-headed, paean to forgiveness.

French Double Feature

There are innumerable features built around the coming of age story of a teen-aged protagonist. A substantial portion of them are centred around protagonists with separated parents. Love Like Poison stands out by virtue of its unusual emphasis on pubescent body anxiety, and its intersection with relationships (romantic, friendly and familial) and religious faith. I don't think I've ever seen a more honest or probing examination of this part of adolescence: too often film-makers focus entirely on the emotional difficulties of negotiating new relationships and forming an adult identity.

Two-Lane Blacktop...

is as much a film about obsession as it is about racing cars across America. It's about two people who rarely speak to others and who, even when talking amongst themselves, are more comfortable with the language of carburettors and tire grip than anything outsiders might recognise as the patios of casual conversation. Indeed the only real pleasure these two can find in words is in the smack talk they use to set up a race. Outside of this the pair use language in a strictly functional way and are embarrassed when it's used to describe feelings. GTO is quickly shut down when he opens up about his past and the most heartfelt words the Driver offers the Girl are, "You can't do it" or perhaps, "We're going to Ohio". This is not merely the behaviour of enthusiasts, it's that of obsessed individuals for whom the world outside of their narrow area of expertise is a distant difficult space.

This portrait of the main characters is an essential part of why the last sequence works as well as it does. In many ways it's as much of a retreat as the ending of The Wrestler. Except that instead of being underpinned by a sense of despair; "Fuck that shit, this is all I'm good at", it comes out of a sense of comfort; "Fuck that shit, this is what it is all about". Although it's telling (and somewhat frightening) that, regardless of outlook, they're both totally alone in their final shots.

*I was so proud of this reading that googled "Two-Lane Blacktop" and obsession just to see how common it was and whadda you know; everyone reads it in pretty much these exact terms.