The Godfather ***
Francis Ford Coppola, 1972
US
@ Cinerama

The pacing and lighting are masterful. An absolute success at what it sets out to do, but just what is that exactly? It seems to me the violence has a fatalistic edge to it, as if there is no other way possible. There are a lot of different ways to portray violence on-screen, and I'm okay with many of them. Pulp Fiction uses it as one of the profound elements of cinematic art. Shotgun Stories suggested that violence was closer, more likely than we might think. A History of Violence suggests that violence lives under the skin, never quite going away no matter how hard we try. Clint Eastwood seems to suggest that violence will bring us down in the end, "live by the sword, die by the sword" kind of thing. No Country for Old Men: violence is performed by the deranged, but it may not in the end be a deranged act. A Thin Red Line takes a calm, dualistic view. The Godfather is sort of like a tragedy, but there are so many things I can't figure out exactly about free will, is this positive/negative/inevitable. It's tough to process because almost no one alien to this world of violence ever appears in the film. It's hard to get enough distance from the characters to discover any perspective in the writing or directing. In that way it's an incredibly dark and kind of dispiriting movie.

See also: IMDb

Being There ***
Hal Ashby, 1979
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

Nice to come back at the end to the only Hal Ashby film I'd seen previously. Certainly the social critique is constant throughout his seventies work, as well as a kind of indirect critique of the rich. Other than The Landlord, he rarely lampoons them directly, but rather suggest subtly ways in which those with money tend either not to deserve or not to understand exactly what their wealth means, most perfectly typified by the scene in Bound for Glory when Woody leaves the rich woman's house after letting her know how he feels about her contribution to society. He also loves an empty-headed protagonist.

From IMDb: "Shirley MacLaine's masturbation scene was shot seventeen times."

The misguided attempt at interpreting the final scene by geeks on the internet (see Wikipedia, for example) reminds me of reactions after watching Mulholland Drive in college. I fail to understand what real reward there is in trying to piece together a puzzling plot that may have had holes at the time of shooting or never even existed in a coherent form, or trying to read further and further into the actions of the characters in order to understand... what exactly? The secret of life is not to be found in such a place, and insisting on closure from a film seems not only unfair, but foolish when there's so much beauty and humor to be appreciated outside of that insane detective work and so little to gain from it.

Note: I later found this quote from Manny Farber in a blog post by Girish.

I don't see how or why anyone should be expected to get the meaning of an event in a movie or a painting. That's a place where criticism goes wrong: it keeps trying for a complete solution. I think the point of criticism is to build up the mystery. And the point is to find movies which have a lot of puzzle in them.

See also: IMDb | Girish's 10 Reasons Why He Likes Manny Farber

Bound for Glory **
Hal Ashby, 1976
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

This was almost certainly the worst projection I've ever witnessed at NW Film Forum. The fact that this seems outrageous merely goes to show that generally the projection is very good, especially for a non-profit cinematheque.

I made a few possibly useful connections during the film. Last December I was appalled by Ann Powers' suggestion that there is a connection between a supposed decrease in political activism and the omnipresent iPod. Then tonight as I was stirred by Hal Ashby and David Carradine's depiction of Woody Guthrie's powerful humanitarian urges in the face of oppression both soft and very hard, I recalled a poster in the MVS house featuring Woody Guthrie's statement on songwriting. (It starts "I hate a song that makes...") and my initial reaction to it, which was that it sounds kind of manipulative and pandering. Against the backdrop of this film, though, it sounds fiercely determined and utterly admirable.

Of course I was reminded of David Foster Wallace's essay, "E Unibus Pluram," which you can probably find somewhere online but I can't right now. Generally it's about how television and the pop culture associated with it has made us all into irony-loving cynics who refuse to appear to be surprised at anything. Mostly he's trying to figure out a way to move forward in a culture that won't accept anything new, because that would require genuine intention and effort, which doesn't sound appropriate any longer. Parts of it are outdated, and it's true in some senses, not in others, but on the whole I think it shows precisely why I can't understand what Woody Guthrie is saying on that poster, that he's speaking in a mode that now sounds outlandish for a popular musician. The question is whether forthright exploration of important social issues is simply impossible via that route, or if perhaps there are other, more subtle but semantically accurate ways of broaching the same topics.

So, if you or someone you know figures out a way to couch advocacy of communitarian/socialist/humanist values in generationally and culturally appropriate terminology, let me know. I'm guessing that might be more useful than telling people not to listen to their iPods.

See also: IMDb

Shampoo **
Hal Ashby, 1975
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

Warren Beatty is awesomely vacant here. He's so completely blank and baffled all the time, even though he's essentially the leading man. Wealth is once again a factor here, since Beatty's character is eventually abandoned because he's not yet a breadwinner. Soundtrack was great.

See also: IMDb

The Last Detail ***
Hal Ashby, 1973
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

Jack Nicholson and Randy Quaid make a terrific odd couple. More digging beneath surfaces, this time manlier men than he's shown elsewhere. The humor is a little bit more desperate and raw, and no wealthy people appear.

See also: IMDb

Harold & Maude **
Hal Ashby, 1971
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

Vivian Pickles' overbearing mother is probably my favorite thing here, although Maude's notoriously shaped statue/sculpture in the middle of her house is right up there. In some ways, particularly the opening scene, this reminded me of The Ruling Class, made around the same time in Britain, but this is certainly a lighter film. The uncle appears to be a castoff from Dr. Strangelove. It was interesting to watch this keeping Rushmore in mind, cf. Jason Schwartzman's comments on Bud Cort as Harold in GOOD Magazine.

See also: IMDb | Piece on Hal Ashby

Le Cercle Rouge ***
Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970
France
@ home on DVD

Excellent in its own right, but I must admit to watching it solely because of Johnnie To's upcoming remake, featuring Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, Chow Yun-fat, and Alain Delon, presumably in a different role. It'll be interesting to see how To maintains or changes the relationship dynamics, and whether or not he ramps up the set-pieces, like the escape from the train or the heist near the end.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

The Landlord ***
Hal Ashby, 1970
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

I feel like these days when we bother to broach the subjects of race and class we have very well-defined things we're allowed to say and specific ways in which we say them. You can basically presume what you're going to "learn" from an issue movie before you even see it.

While it's also hilarious, this film feels a bit dangerous by today's standards, mostly in terms of content but also in terms of form at some points, maybe because there hadn't been such a long tradition of "well-made" films dealing the integration, at least in which the writer could use actual terminology and not just beat around the bush whilst assuming the audience would be on the same page.

See also: IMDb | J. Hoberman review

Alien **
Ridley Scott, 1979
US
@ Egyptian Theater

Wow, did the guy next to me ever have some awful breath. Also, I sat down (in the most desirable row) two seats away from the only other person in the row. These two dudes come in and sit right next to me, leaving a couple seats open toward the aisle. Then the original "only other person" is joined by her two friends who sit to her left, leaving me squeezed between two groups even though the row was only half full. I was baffled.

I was struck by how, in some ways, horror is an essentially empty genre. That is, in most genres the protagonist wants something, strives to get it, and then succeeds, achieving a goal of some sort, perhaps many sorts. But in horror, the hero is having a fine time as it is, then normalcy is disrupted by the horrific monster, and the objective is to restore normalcy or escape to somewhere resembling it, simply to obtain what's been lost over the course of the film. There's something kind of nice about that.

See also: IMDb | Manohla Dargis review (2003)

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid ***
Sam Peckinpah, 1973
US
@ Landmark Metro

I'm pretty much a sucker for an elegiac western, not to mention one that features a winking, grinning Bob Dylan. Not terribly excited about anything Kris Kristofferson does here, particularly as he's almost twice as old as the character he's playing. James Coburn's a force of nature, though, and Kristofferson is a good model for him to gaze at. Sort of the young buck vs. the embittered careerist conundrum, kind of appropriate for the beginning of the Me Decade. Coburn's pained looks and self-loathing are practically a work of art in and of themselves, deepened by his rough, terse declarations. Tough to believe he's only 45 here.

See also: IMDb

Killer of Sheep ***
Charles Burnett, 1977
US
@ IFC Center

The low-budget black & white scenes of intimate, awkward dialogue could bring to mind Stranger Than Paradise or Mutual Appreciation, but this film feels more mature than either of those. World-weary without being jaded or snarky, Burnett presents characters who stumble dazedly onward through their meager surroundings, but retains a wry sense of humor, which seems to me critically important. I guess my feeling is that he captures on film some essential truth(s) about life, probably broader than though certainly inclusive of the neighborhood of Watts was like in the 1970's. There has been a ton of praise recently heaped on this film, but as usual if you read just one piece, read J. Hoberman's. (By the way, did you see his incredible Elliott Gould profile re: The Long Goodbye@Film Forum this past week?)

See also: IMDb | Metacritic | J. Hoberman review