Zero for Conduct: Recent Comments

Comment on The Gang's All Here

Carmen — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:26:08 GMT

At some point in the mid-90s Wong Kar-wai's exciting and hyperbolic style lost its moorings. Whether this happened between Days of Being Wild and Chungking Express, during the two years it took to make Ashes of Time , or between the latter two films and Fallen Angels (1995), Wong's powerful organic flow, which makes Days of Being Wild his only masterpiece to date, has atrophied into a slag heap of individual set pieces. Like its characters, My Blueberry Nights is less a film with a subject than a film about not being able to find one. The film is more like a striking mannerist style in search of content, made poignant only by the homesickness and emotional confusion underlying the effort. Judging by the American reviews of My Blueberry Nights, it looks like American film critics are finally starting to realize what we have always known about this unoriginal, perpetrating fraud. The honeymoon is over for Wong, another Asian appropriator of euro film culture. When will Godard and the family of Antonioni get their residual checks?

Comment on Body and Soul

Josh — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:30:08 GMT

What about all those communists in Hollywood and elsewhere who betrayed their country, its democratic ideals and human decency itself in order to support a mass murderer like Joseph Stalin and to lend a helping hand to an empire that destroyed the lives of millions of human beings?It is not necessary for us to rehearse every detail of what went on 50 years ago or to take sides in personal matters, however, to draw certain conclusions. The release of the Venona transcripts and other Soviet documents in recent years makes clear beyond any doubt that American communists were part of a conspiracy to betray this country and were in fact engaged in acts, orchestrated from the Kremlin, to undermine the security of this democracy and to render it defenseless in the face of its totalitarian adversary. Propaganda, which was what Hollywood excelled in, was no small national asset. If Hollywood's communists need make no apologies for their role in trying to deliver this asset to America's enemies, then why should Kazan apologize for defending America against them? If the opponents of the blacklist argue that it is such an evil in itself, why then is it acceptable to blacklist Kazan? The sympathizers of leftist dictatorships still want to cover up the fact that the real defenders of freedom were not the "martyred" Hollywood Reds but the courageous men who acted to expose them.

But even if one were to accept the debased ethic of an alienated filmmaker like Polonsky, who said the people Kazan named were his friends? In his autobiography "A Life," Kazan makes very clear that the communists whom he named had not only betrayed his country, in his eyes, but betrayed him, as an artist and man, as well. Why, he said to himself, should I sacrifice my career for people like this?

Comment on Body and Soul

Stephen Bowie — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:12:23 GMT

Anthology screened "Romance of a Horsethief" recently. It's very uneven -- mostly doomed by the commercial casting of pretty, blank faces as the young leads, not to mention Yul Brynner -- but it has its moments, mainly the humorous banter between Eli Wallach & David Opatoshu. At least it's better than anything Kazan made after 1961.

Reading Polonsky's comments again, I'm reminded about how badly that right-wing wacko Richard Schickel treats him in his Kazan bio. Kazan's '50s masterpieces need a post-political backlash reappraisal, but it won't happen as long as he has defenders like Schickel.

Comment on Body and Soul

Michael Atkinson — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:30:15 GMT

I wish it were -- I've never seen it.

Comment on Body and Soul

Michael Dempsey — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:54:34 GMT

"Romance Of A Horsethief" ought to be revived. Its final image of people walking through a forest lingers in memory as one of the great concluding shots in film history, though the film's absence makes it impossible to detail what leads up to this shot and contributes to its sublimity.

Comment on The Gang's All Here

Michael Atkinson — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:57:27 GMT

Yes; experience has shown me that attending in a serious way to Cannes hype is the short road to disappointing filmaholicism. There, and at Sundance and Berlin and et al., the context for a film is a distorted stew of hot-ness, rumor, overhype, glamour, anticipated accolades, and a cinephilic "career arc" view, which in toto is never fair to the film or the filmmaker. Any of us could cook up a list of "disappointing" festival films that, given a little air and time, prove to be landmarks. By the same token, some of the best films of the last decade have only been seen (here) at festivals, unlucky (or lucky) enough to garner little or no buzz: Lola Salvador and Carlos Molinero's The Mist in the Palm Trees, Alexei German Jr.'s The Last Train, Hong Sang-soo's The Power of Kangwon Province, Otar Iosseliani's Farewell, Home Sweet Home, Lee Chang-dong's Peppermint Candy, Sarunas Bartas's Freedom, Faouzi Bensaidi's A Thousand Months, Park Cheol-su's Green Chair, Stanley Kwan's Everlasting Regret, Paul Rosdy's Neue Welt, Brice Cauvin's Hotel Harabati, and so on, and that's just scratching the surface because I never go to or cover film festivals unless they're local.

Comment on The Gang's All Here

Matt — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:38:05 GMT

I enjoyed My Blueberry Nights more than I enjoyed 2046. Although I have to say expectations played a factor for both.

Comment on The Gang's All Here

Michael Atkinson — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:20:33 GMT

Ew is right. These things are just meeting products thought up by desperate editors to sell magazines, which I'm surprised to imagine they probably do. The AFI has no excuses -- who do they poll, exactly? -- but that anonymous commenter just about pegged that stinky rat carcass to the posting board. It's probably best to steer clear of it, as you would a swarm of gnats.

Comment on The Gang's All Here

james keepnews — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:35:09 GMT

on the subject of money shots, there's this latest contribution to mass-cultural (with absolutely no apologies to ken russell, whatsoever) listomania, ew (has a publication ever been quite so matchlessly acronymed?) and its induced top 100 films of the last 25 years:

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20207076_20207387_20207063,00.html

this probably deserves its own thread, maybe beginning with a reflection on why we're awash in so many agressively awful lists -- of course, AFI is 75% to blame for the trend recently. it's rather as though there's a fired film critic for every terrible "best (fill in the blank)" film list. one "anonymous" online commenter observes:

"hey, lookit! _pretty woman_, _when harry met sally..._, _jerry mcguire_...those, and many more besides are all better films than _unforgiven_! AND _children of men_! AND _y tu mamá también_! AND anything over the last 25 by jarmusch, egoyan, ferrara, or any of the last films by bergman, malle, tarkovsky, etc.!!! bravo, EW!"

Comment on Billion Dollar Brain

Michael Atkinson — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:32:06 GMT

Good idea. You and John stay there 100 years, suck some blood.