Author: tedmills

Dir. Godfrey Reggio, 2002
Gentlemen and good ladies of the court, I present to you Exhibit A in this capital punishment case against Postmodernism.
Godfrey Reggio is, based on this film and 1991’s Anima Mundi, almost completely artistically bankrupt. I got the sneaky suspicion after watching the latter last year at Philip Glass’ “Shorts” concert, that Reggio is not even a filmmaker, but an editor, and not a coherent one. The third and perhaps final installment on the “qatsi” series that never needed to be a trilogy is a dull hash-up of stock footage and iconography. You could take a random assortment of famous 20th century people, places, and things, apply random After Effects filters to them, string them all together and play some Philip Glass over the top and you’d have this film. If, as Greil Marcus says, MTV is “the pornography of semiotics,” then this is a Red Shoes Diary marathon, not even offering a bang for your buck.
I know it’s a lot to even expect a message or even an idea from a Reggio film, but at least Powaqqatsi was visually interesting. The cheapness of the effects are apparent, and any shot that looks nice is the work of somebody else.
My friend Jon has never liked Reggio, and disagrees with me that at least Koyaanisqatsi is good. If Reggio makes any more films, I may have to give Jon his due.
(And what’s up with the poster: “America Is Test Driving the Future”? Perhaps the marketing department thought that the film was just a collection of commercial footage. Oh, wait…)

Dir. Yasuzo Masamura, 1964
Nicely rediscovered and released by Fantoma DVD, this is a tale of whacked-out obsession based on author Junichiro Tanizaki‘s novel. I’ve seen another film based on a book of his: “The Key,” which came out around this time, directed by Kon Ichikawa.
Kyouko Kishida plays Sonoko, a upper class housewife who begins an obsessive lesbian affair with a fellow student at her art college, Mitsuko, played by Ayako Wakao. Two complementary men (Mitsuko’s creepy fiance and Sonoko’s wimpy husband) provide the complications, though Mitsuko is the stormy center. From the get-go, the acting is set on level 10, and the action is reduced to a series of claustrophobic chambers, similar in feel to the anti-social level of “In the Realm of the Senses” and any number of S&M films from Japan (like the most wonderful “Wife to Be Sacrificed”). With the constant refrain of lover’s suicide, there’s no way this film could get translated for the west. And while death is a usual way out for lesbians in most films pre 1980, Manji’s lunacy goes beyond that, and in fact, Masamura has little to say about lesbianism per se.

Sonoko has an attachment to Mitsuko more along the lines of “Death in Venice”–Mitsuko as unobtainable art object and beauty personified, who attracts (and destroys) men and women alike.
Pretty funny all the way through, and I’m not sure how much was intentional.
The DVD transfer is okay. Full Toho-scope ratio, but there’s a strange blue-green pall to the film (though reds and whites look fine). There’s a brief 30 seconds where a really awful print has been used to, I assume, fill in the gap missing from the original negative.

Dir. Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
My friend Chris came over for his first viewing of Zulawski’s monsterpiece, my third viewing. Chris greatly enjoyed it, as did I, and after hearing the commentary track, I don’t know if I’m closer to really figuring this film out (for example, how to interpret all the Catholicism once you know that Zulawski is an atheist?). I do know that very few American actors would go as far into madness as Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani do here, especially Adjani, whose wild-eyed looks burn a hole in the screen. (“You have no right to film people’s souls!” she reportedly told Zulawski during filming, “This is psychological pornography!”). When Hollywood actors play “crazy” they’re always winking at the audience and/or worrying what their Pilates instructor might think.
What Chris brought up was the wider geopolitical metaphors of the film, which I have yet to really unravel (but which were still there in La Fidelite, a fact no reviewer that I read seemed to even grasp). Set as it is in a divided Berlin, with gloomy shots of the Wall, and with its whole story about separation, loss, madness, doppelgangers, and an apocalyptic close, Possession is about inner and outer worlds ending in much the same way that Don McKellar’s Last Night does.
Possession (of what? of whom? and to what end?) is probably still way ahead of its time, and is the cinematic equivalent of poking a fresh wound with an infected finger, but it’s one of my favorites.