Movies of the Week

Return to habit, I hope.... Some good ones showing around town this week.

Bubble - *** - most of the buzz about this film is related to its distribution: released into theaters, the internet, and DVD all at the same time. It's an interesting experiment, though this film is not likely to prove much about it. Bubble is a small art film, following three characters who work at a doll factory on the West Virginia/Ohio border, until something happens... It's fiction, but it's barely fiction - it's shot where it's set; the actors are all local residents, playing characters not far from who they are - there's a policeman in the story, played by the local police detective, say. It's slow, attentive to the world it's set in, and when a Plot appears, it comes matter of factly and is resolved matter of factly... It's not going to make a lot of money, however it is distributed - but it is an excellent film. It's ambitious, for all its minimalism - it was shot on DV, but looks magnificent - and might sound better than it looks. There are sequences, for instance at one of the factories where the characters work, where Soderburgh uses ambient sound, tied tot he visuals - every cut is a cut in the sound, the room sound - it gives weight and specificity to the world, the world of work. It is a bit reminiscent of films like Bruno Dumont's L'Humanite, with it's amateur actors, its working class milieu, its emphasis on places - or recent American indie films like The Talent Given Us, or Andrew Bujalski's films. It's been interesting looking at the reviews - Roger Ebert gushes, but other writers (say, Andrew O'Hehir, in Salon) resist, and whine about the miserablism of the film, worry about it's condescension to the poor and beaten down. But how is this film more condescending than Wagner or Bujalski? Sure, the plot, when it gets going, is generic and feels forced - as does some of the symbolism (the doll factory, notably.) But the rest - having people play characters very close to themselves, though not necessarily themselves - in a story - but in a way that looks and feels almost like a documentary - isn't all that different from those urban hipster films. I will say - I think the plot sort of warps the film away from what it might have been. It makes it a genre film, and a less common or believable genre film than if it had turned into a romantic comedy. But that's about the only thing I can find to complain about.

L'Intrus - **** - Claire Denis film that appears to be a masterpiece. Michel Subor lives on the France/Switzerland border with his dogs and guns and an Asian girlfriend. He has a bad heart though, and an estranged son, and he sets out to buy a new heart, and after that, to find another (?) son he left behind in the South Seas. There - he suffers a setback with his health, which seems to have dire consequences. I am not sure, in fact, one can piece together a literal, logical story - one can, however, piece together a very strong, and very logical emotional story. It works on a kind of dream logic - using substitution of characters, situations, images to move the narrative forward - a strategy made more confusing, perhaps (though also more moving) by the style - elliptical, dialogue, driven by images of nature - mountains and trees and the southern oceans.... There is imagery of intrusion throughout - the heart plot (the idea of the transplanted heart as an intruder in Subor's body), Subor's own trek to Tahiti, where he is an intruder; smugglers crossing the border; people breaking into other people's houses, interfering in their lives; the mix of nationalities - French, Swiss, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Tahitian, etc.... Plus imagery of man in nature (and sometimes nature in man's world), and things like burials, swimming, boats in water, lovemaking, all given a decided sense of penetration. It adds up, in the end, to a complete aesthetic experience - where narrative causality is replaced by analogical causality - a flow of related imagery, that carries the story forward.... I have to apologize for the coolness of these remarks, they do no justice to the power of this film. It is, I suppose, a cold film, one that keeps a distance from its characters, freezing them (and us) out - but it is an overwhelming film, strange and haunting.

The New World - ** - So last week, I took some shots at old Terrence - but this week... well, sooner or later I'd have to see it.... The results? It actually started out very well. It comes off like low rent, rather syrupy Werner Herzog - man in nature and meaning it no good, with Wagner on the soundtrack, but prettier and less severe than Herzog. But intriguing. And, again at the beginning, Malick even gets the story told, efficiently, with an effective balance between story and the visuals, the new world, the magnificence of nature and all. Then, John Smith heads up the Chickahominy and is captured by the Indians and Pocahontas saves his life - well. Here, it seems, imagination fails - and all Malick can come up with is a montage of Happy Days Among the Savages, soon further marred by the intrusion of voiceovers, the absolute bane of a Terrence Malick film. And it never quite recovers - it sometimes seems to come into focus for a moment or two, like when Smith returns to the English and sorts things out, or some of the fighting scenes - but mostly, from this point on, it is one long montage sequence, more or less watchable, though with plenty of voiceover. What's probably worst about it is that it is, in the end, pure schlock - doomed love, then the Husband, a kinder, less mythic man... It's not without its heavy handed symbolism, the contrasts between white men and Indians, the way they move, dress, act, and the contrasts between the wild, beautiful untamed world of Virginia, and the grubby words of English cities and the rigid, manicured lawns of the old English manor houses. All of it whacking you in the head.... what can you do?