Sight and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club - Page 91

george kaplan · 06-16-2005, 06:31 PM

The Double Life of Veronique

There are far better films about doppelgangers out there (e.g., The Prisoner of Zenda), but this one is an artsy-fartsy melodrama that makes absolutely no sense, so it must be deep, and of course it deserves a place on the Sight & Sound list.

A major, major step down from The Decalogue.

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Seth Paxton · 06-16-2005, 10:44 PM

Oh yeah, well what about The Phantom of Liberty, George.

Again, I appreciate the experimental work, the effort to do something odd and different. But that didn't make the viewing any easier or pleasant. It's like putting lots of salt on cake just because its different. I guess you don't know till you try, but Bunuel's effort makes it clear why intentionally contradictory ideas or apparently pointless jumping from senseless scene to senseless scene is not the way to make a "good" film.

I get that he tried to show only a series of setups and then cut just as it was getting interesting, and I understand that this makes for an unusual effect. But it also made the film drag on to an unpleasant level.

The best compliment I can give it is that it was very much like a surrealist version of Meaning of Life or Kentucky Fried Movie. It was a compliation of setups patched together by links, except that instead of working toward a comedic punchline the scenes work toward a "surrealistic punchline". The jokes are replaced by the nonsense/contradictory moments that make up surrealism.

For me it was just Bunuel trying too hard to make a point. Of course for fans of his this was a real return to The Golden Age or An Andolou Dog, pure surrealism at its best/worst.

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next up - The Remains of the Day and The Navigator.

george kaplan · 06-17-2005, 10:37 AM

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Oh yeah, well what about The Phantom of Liberty, George.

Seth Paxton · 06-18-2005, 12:15 AM

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I've not yet seen it, so for now, I have no comment.

Trust me, you will.

glen_esq · 06-18-2005, 10:12 AM

Xala was released on dvd in May.

Adam_S · 06-18-2005, 06:40 PM

Shoah - Part One

There's not much point in rating this but I do have a few comments about just how overindulgent this first part of this documentary is. The first part was just a few seconds shy of two hours but it could have easily been either one hour or 45 minutes long. Instead, it takes a Frenchman to make the holocaust pretentious. So we get to hear the question in french (subtitled) the translated question to German/Polish/etc (unsubbed), the answer in German/Polish/etc (unsubbed) and then the translation back to French (subtitled). How much easier would have been to just subtitle the people's answers to the questions. And much of the time we don't need to even see/hear the questions. And having the translations. It's just needless and stupid. They spent five years editing only to not edit half the interviews?
The last thirty minutes of the film they just subtitled people's stories and that was incredibly effective and much more compelling. It didn't have the distancing effect of the first half of the film.

Adam

Brook K · 06-19-2005, 01:23 AM

Um, because the film was not made to cater to your attention span or exclusively for the English market. Shoah is priceless oral history. As oral history, by allowing us to see both the speaker, interviewer, and translater, a future researcher, critic or otherwise interested party could verify exactly what was being said and that the subtitle/dub (if required by the viewer) is accurate. While one can question Lanzmann's methods, his work is still an invaluable piece of the historical puzzle.

As for Phantom, I enjoy cinematic experimentation and found most of the episodes very funny. I used the quote about switching "just as each episode got interesting", but I think this is somewhat false modesty or a joke, as most of the eps play as is, after all, the Monty Python troupe was doing the same thing in Flying Circus episodes right around the same time, making the setup a punchline, playing a skit and then jumping to "and now for something completely different", having a cop or military officer show up and end the sketch, etc.

According to DVDBeaver, the Xala DVD is atrocious, so be warned. A 2nd Sembene film was also released at the same time, Mandabi. I do plan on renting Xala, also have Au Hasard Balthazar #1 in my queue but it is a "long wait". I was hoping Balthazar was waiting for me when I got back from my trip tonight, but they passed over it and sent me Heaven Can Wait.

Jim_K · 06-19-2005, 09:25 AM

caught Au Hasard Balthazar a.k.a. a girl and her donkey

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I pretty much had the same reaction to Phantom of Liberty as Seth.

As for the Python comparisons, well they were doing this sort of thing well before Phantom & at least what they were doing was funny.

Though I did read somewhere that some of the Python troupe were big fans of Bunuel.

Lew Crippen · 06-19-2005, 10:13 AM

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There's not much point in rating this but I do have a few comments about just how overindulgent this first part of this documentary is.

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Shoah is priceless oral history. As oral history, by allowing us to see both the speaker, interviewer, and translater, a future researcher, critic or otherwise interested party could verify exactly what was being said and that the subtitle/dub (if required by the viewer) is accurate. While one can question Lanzmann's methods, his work is still an invaluable piece of the historical puzzle.

Exactly Brook. In this case Adam, I think you miss the point, which has nothing to do with making a movie to maximize the audience's enjoyment (or involvement) or to make the best possible film (in a technical sense), but that has everything to do with providing future generations with a priceless document of what happened during those years.

Just as works such as The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or The Story of Civizilation (10 or 11 long volumes) should not be compared to a novel, netiher should this work be compared to movies meant to be seen in a theater in one sitting.