Current music: Lemming of the BDA
----------------------------------------------------
CITY OF DREAMS (2000) - d. Belinda Mason
Maybe when I make some more friends here in Chapel Hill, I'll watch less TV. It's only a week in, and I'm not watching much rot, so there's still hope. Anyhow, Sundance promotes this 'DocDay' thing all the time, which just means that they show documentaries all day on Mondays. It never occurred to me that they would be good docs, or ones I wouldn't be able to see otherwise, but here we are, and I just watched two good docs that I won't be seeing anywhere else anytime soon.
'City of Dreams' is a stylistically dull film in the mode of Ken Burns' oeuvre and other public TV excite-a-thons, but is, like much of Burnsy's work, watchable primarily because it has an interesting story at its center. Also, it's Australian. I have a sweet tooth for stuff about architecture, and an even sweeter tooth for stuff about people who crossed swords with Frank Lloyd Wright, a man I like to think of as the Ronald Reagan of architecture (outsized egos, undersized achievements). Anyhow, 'City of Dreams' is about Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin, two architects who started out working for Wright and then ended up in Australia after creating the winning design for the city of Canberra (the new nation's capitol). Mahony was the first woman ever to become a licensed architect and was a draftsperson of exceptional talent. Griffin was one of the brightest lights in Wright's Chicago practice and created landscape architecture.
Anyhow, the story is the tale of the foundations of modern Australia, the modernization and globalization of architecture, and the growing place of women in 20th century society. I really enjoyed it and think that the relationship between Mahony and Griffin is pretty damned fascinating. My big complaint is that the film tries to be too even-handed in its treatment of its subjects, and pulls punches when it could be doing more to tell us about Mahony, whose place in feminist and women's history - after seeing this film - is clearly undervalued. There's a fascinating and somewhat unsettling question over true authorship in the couple's work, one which gets at the very heart of the feminist debate. I'd like to see a movie with Mahony at the center; one which really opens up these questions, rather than relying on the coy hints 'City' resorts to in its conclusion. Still, a good watch.
GRANDMOTHER, HITLER, AND I (2001) - d. Carl Johan De Geer
This was really short, like 17 minutes, and, while it's not going to change anyone's life, I liked it. Carl Johan De Geer is a Swedish artist/designer/product-of-the-60s whose grandparents were Nazis during the 1930s, and whose grandmother remained a staunch supporter of the party and Hitler until her death in the 70s(?). De Geer, on the other hand, was a hippy, a socialist, and married into a Jewish family. There's nothing gut-wrenching about the way he examines his past, but the nearly off-hand approach to his subject actually adds to the film's depth. And though he's clearly opposed to this Nazi past, the woman was also his grandmother, and there are fond anecdotes as well as darker ones which may make you cringe. The visual style is clever and kinetic, thanks to De Geer's background in design, setting it apart from similar works on similar subjects. Most 'my dark family secret' films get their point across via a hammering dullness. This one doesn't, and stands out for it.
BLACK SUNDAY (1977) - d. John Frankenheimer
I'd like to be able to say that I'm a big Bruce Dern fan. I mean, I've seen him in a bunch of Corman stuff and he's great in 'Coming Home,' but I don't really know anything else he's done. After seeing 'Black Sunday,' I wish I did. His acting here is sort of early-Method, which means it's a little bit too stagey and a little bit too broad, but he burns through the screen, and he more than holds his own in a film with an equally great performance by Robert Shaw.
Shaw's in fine form here. His character, Major Kabakov, is one bad dude. He's an Israeli operative and he's the opposite of a soft touch. Better still, he's the good guy. The only movie I like him better in is 'The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.' I'm in the minority who think he kind of overdid it in 'Jaws.'
Weapon of Choice
Still, there's something about this film that doesn't quite work, and I'm not sure what it is. Frankenheimer is up for it and was clearly the right director for the material. The cast is great, the storyline's intriguing and, with the weight of current history, has more power than it probably did in '77. My guess is it's the story itself, with a pinch of studio meddling thrown in. When 'Silence of the Lambs' came out, I went back and read Thomas Harris' other two books, Red Dragon and Black Sunday and I liked them both. As cool as Silence and Dragon were, there was something comic book in the stories, while Black Sunday felt like the real deal. Now, it's like the tables are turned. The Hannibal Lecter films, with the exception of 'Hannibal' and the begrudging inclusion of 'Red Dragon', have managed to sparkle with a sense of the 'real.' 'Black Sunday,' on the other hand, loses something in translation from the page to the screen, and feels too much of a piece with the disaster films of the seventies, like 'Airport' and 'The Towering Inferno.' There's nothing wrong with that, but you have to wonder if there wasn't a push from the studio/producers to make the film's story more accessible than it is in the book. I remember being totally fucking creeped out reading the book - the same kind of chills you experience in reading Dragon or Silence - and, here, the experience is more of an adrenalized rush than a heeby-jeebies shiver.
Overall, though, this is a keeper, not quite as much fun as the Harry Palmer films or 'The Odessa File', and not nearly as razor sharp as 'The Day of the Jackal,' but it's in the same ballpark, and not many movies are. Too bad this genre so totally sucks since the 70s.
No comments:
Post a Comment