A Week of Films

Let's see if we can get this rebooted, shall we?

Tristram Shandy: or, A Cock and a Bull (***1/2) - one of the local critics referred to the novel, Tristram Shandy, as being of interest only to graduate students. If that is true, I should say, it more than justifies the expense of taking an MFA. Sure, at this point in history, it probably requires some Work to figure out what is going on, and why, in the book - but the rewards, the rewards!*... In the meanwhile, there is now this film to tide you over until you can find a suitable grad school, and it does the job pretty well. They have followed the logical course in adapting a book that is emphatically written, emphatically an object made of words on paper, and made it emphatically filmed. So we get the actors arguing about teeth, talking about the film, the book, their shoes, and Steve Coogan's child and ego. It may not be quite so innovative as it might seem**, but it is very well done. The metafiction is used to good effect - using the relationship between Coogan and Brydon to echo that of Walter and Toby, (who are, in the end, the real stars of the book); making Coogan's relationship to the Shandies analogous to that of Tristram to his father (and the book). It is all about birth, says Cinemascope. Clever too in how it handles characters - some get dropped from the adaptation (though they are as likely as not to show up anyway), while others - namely Jenny (a significant character in the book, who never actually appears in it) - are added (more than once, actually.) And finally - all this formal juggling never detracts from the comedy - which, as in the book, runs the gamut from straight on slapstick through elaborate word play (and words on paper - or pictures on film) to subtle and often moving character driven comedy. The film is very funny, sometimes uproariously so, and always satisfying.

Neil Young: Heart of Gold - *** - it's hard to rate concert films. They depend on the music, and then - if the music is good enough (or bad enough) it can trump the filmmaking. About all the filmmakers can do is get in the way. Jonathon Demme does not get in the way - he films songs in their completion, he shoots in a plain, straightforward way, he cuts unobtrusively, to knit together the musicians on stage, or to focus on the person taking a lead... It's hard to improve on it. This is Neil Young at his most country, acoustic, quiet (though he can get worked up when he wants) - this was shot right after his brain aneurysm, about the time of the release of Prairie Wind, and contains that record, plus a greatest hits. It would be edifying, I think, to see it in a double bill with Year of the Horse. It is amazing how well Neil stays in character - he never slips, he plays these songs straight, plain - the contrast with the sprawling blare of the Crazy Horse material is fascinating. It's not just the different style - it's the whole performance attitude. These songs are played straight - not much variation from the instrumentation and sound of the records, nothing flashy, nothing really improvisational. The Crazy Horse stuff - he can't seem to find the end - this material, this performance, everything is pretty well defined. There's not much to say - it's a superb performance, Neil's acoustic side done to perfection. It's a reminder of just what a body of work the man has - that he can do this, play like this, leaving half his career untouched. I admit I have a soft spot for the wankier, Like a Hurricane, Cortez the Killer Neil Young, but I can't complain about this side of old Neil. What I do think is that he's at his best when the two sides come together - the Live Rust model is unbeatable...

Charisma (on DVD) - **** - this might be Kiyoshi Kurosawa's masterpiece. Koji Yakusho plays a cop who after screwing up a negotiation is sent on vacation - he hitchhikes into the woods, then sets out on foot - things start to get weird. There is a tree, that is dieing, but also might be killing the forest. There is a kid protecting the tree - a scientist and her sister trying to destroy the tree - a variety of comical environmentalists trying to study the tree or kill it or sell it - hard to say what. It isn't necessarily important. Like the rest of Kurosawa's films, this is spooky and strange, funny, quiet but with bursts of deadpan violence. It is full of ideas - doubles, parallels, metaphors, allegories, that come in and out of phase with each other. They are engrossing and beautiful movies that haunt you... They are also very hard to part with - when I get his films from Netflix, I watch them - and then keep rewatching them. I had Doppelganger for a month or more, and ended up watching it three times... I suppose I should just buy them, if I can find them...

Footnotes:

*A fact anticipated by Mr. Sterne, of course:

Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader ! read, -- or by the knowledge of the great saint Paraleipomenon -- I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once; for without much reading, by which your reverence knows, I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motly emblem of my work !) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unraval the many opinions, transactions and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.

**Or as the book was, and is, even now - even without the 18th century language and sensibilities, it's a more radical deconstruction*** than all but a few 20th century works.

***Which is, for once, not really an affectation but a fair description of the way it examines the process of writing, the formal properties of writing and books, and, actually, living, thinking, etc.