why there will be no review today

[rushthatspeaks]

There was going to be. I have the list of books to write up and everything.

But then sovay and I watched The Color of Pomegranates, directed by Sergei Parajanov, and now officially the most impressive thing that can be streamed off Netflix, in the sense that it was brilliant, and we lay about for a while staring at the ceiling and having the following conversation:

One of us: "So. Sheep."

The other: "Yep. Chickens."

"Red."

"Gold. That was maybe kind of like a Tarot deck with a set of symbols I've never encountered."

"I know we said we wanted to watch a weird movie with a blind angel, but that was when I thought we were watching Barbarella."

"Amazing horsemanship."

"Yeah. Do you think it would have helped if either of us actually knew Armenian?"

"Not remotely. I do not have the ethnological training to figure out whether that movie was as weird as it seems."

"Books weeping water."

"Peter Greenaway saw this movie."

"It's like a series of Orthodox icons done as tableaux vivants."

"That had an erotic bobbin-lace-making scene."

"I know. It was genuinely hot."

"Red."

"I find myself thinking of it as an art museum and not a movie. You know the way you wander through museums concentrating intensely on things."

"How did they let him get away with this in 1968 in the Soviet Union? *consults Wikipedia* Oh. They didn't. Labor camp, huh."

"There is a review on imdb that just says 'after this movie I had a headache and collapsed'. Fair enough."

"We have to watch all of Pasolini now."

"I think we just discovered the Tilda Swinton of Armenia."

"Sheep."

And then I thought about my list of books, and the next one is Angels in America. Fuck that. I'm going to bed.

Comments

[dorothean]

"It's like a series of Orthodox icons done as tableaux vivants."

"That had an erotic bobbin-lace-making scene."

I would watch that!

Question, though: is there any sexual assault? Last time I watched a very strange arty film (can't remember what it was), I was really badly triggered by something. Now I like to check in advance.

[rushthatspeaks]

There is no sexual assault at all. I am trying to think of anything that would bother anybody about the movie-- there's a scene in which somebody is slaughtering a sheep, but it is not terribly explicit and pretty short. Apart from that, completely free of the standard things-that-bother-most-people.

[dorothean]

Oh, thank you!

[sovay]

Sheep.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I FORGOT TO MENTION THE CAMEL! To be fair it was kind of hard to see, as whatever that was on the other half of the screen was absorbing every possible scrap of my attention.

I just... watching surrealist film in languages you don't speak is mind-boggling enough, but this one was beautiful and made sense as a narrative, except for how we have NO FRICKIN' CONTEXT which is us, not it.

SHEEP.

[sovay]

as whatever that was on the other half of the screen was absorbing every possible scrap of my attention.

I think it actually had bells on.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

That is absolutely fascinating; I envy you guys. Have you ever watched Milcho Manchevski's Before the Rain, Majid Majidi's The Color of Paradise or Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Gabbeh? All three might be up your shared alley...and man, believe it or not, I've never noticed that all three of these guys' initials are M.M. That's synchronicity for you, I guess.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I haven't seen any of those! *notes down*

If you can get hold of it, you should totally watch this one; it is amazing and I have not described one-tenth the reasons why.

[sovay]

Have you ever watched Milcho Manchevski's Before the Rain, Majid Majidi's The Color of Paradise or Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Gabbeh?

None of. I think we have a film festival.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Stalker? By um Russian/Soviet dude, I think Tarkovksy? Weird, long, slow, utterly absorbing, including the scene where nothing happens except it rains for about 10 minutes.

[sovay]

Have you seen Stalker? By um Russian/Soviet dude, I think Tarkovksy?

I just had that recommended to me at Readercon! It sounded like a good place to start with non-Solaris Tarkovsky.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

It's a brilliant film. And I say that even though it is NOTHING like the kind of film I would usually like.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

No, but it sounds awesome.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

I strongly recommend it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_stranger_here/]

"I know we said we wanted to watch a weird movie with a blind angel, but that was when I thought we were watching Barbarella."

Heeee!

Hi -- I got here through a link to this post by Amal, and now I totally want to hang out watching movies with you.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Hi! Where did Amal link, out of curiosity? And I'm glad you liked the post.

Movies are awesome. This is one of the great truths of the universe, as far as I can tell.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_stranger_here/]

Facebook.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Wow.

"I think we just discovered the Tilda Swinton of Armenia."</>

Mrf?

Nine

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

The actress in question plays about six parts. One is female. I did not recognize her as the same person in any of them, except that I had vague suspicions that the female one and a young man were doubled-- but I thought the gender of the doubling actor was male.

She is also ridiculously beautiful.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

"That conversation is so wonderful it's probably almost as good as the movie!"

"Shows what you know."

"Perhaps so. Still, any movie that can inspire a conversation like that is a movie I want to see."

"[...]"

"Only -- please tell me you were kidding about watching all of Pasolini. And even if you weren't, was there more to the connection between Pasolini and Pomegranates than headaches and collapse?"

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Of the directors I love dearly, three-- Derek Jarman, Peter Greenaway, and this one, Sergei Parajanov-- all cite Pasolini as a Defining Influence. There are visual things that Parajanov and Jarman use in their films that are very similar to one another, and I cannot imagine them having the opportunity to see each other's work, though I'm pretty sure Greenaway's seen both. I would like to know if those visuals are descent from Pasolini, or what. I mean we are talking extremely distinctive similar weirdnesses here.

Also, Pasolini is the only director whose work Jarman admits to finding successfully comedic, which is by itself such an odd statement given the views of, you know, the rest of the universe, that I have to know what is going on with that.

So no, not remotely kidding about Pasolini. I have no idea whether Parajanov was swiping from him, and I would love to find out.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

What you say makes excellent good sense to me, and my interest in all of the directors you mention is reawakened as a result. I think what put me off Pasolini was, six months or so ago, watching the preview of Salò on the Criterion website and being really turned off by it. Not sure I need to see it! But I really liked The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, which I want to watch again, and I am intrigued by some of his other films as well.

I want to see Jarman's The Tempest, and already own but have not yet watched his Edward II. Which of his films would you most recommend?

I am already a confirmed fan of Prospero's Books and The Pillow Book, but am unsure what to try of Greenaway's next -- his films seem to be hard to find. A little Greenaway seems to go a long way, though.

And I very much want to see Parajanov.

Have you seen any of Béla Tarr (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bela_Tarr)'s films? Or Krzysztof Kieślowski (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kieslowski)'s?

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I am not sure about Salò either; not sure I need that in my head.

Jarman: I'll give these to you in the order I recommend them, which is not order of quality but rather the order in which I think one would most be able to track what things are his constant visual language and what's individual to each film. The Edward II is utterly brilliant, an interesting fusion of the Marlovian language and contemporary politics. The Tempest is an odd duck I love dearly, one of the only films I've seen which has a real academic grounding in medieval magic, and which clearly was in Greenaway's head when he made Prospero's Books. Caravaggio is the one that made me fall for Jarman. Every frame in it is a twist on a different Renaissance painting, and it has a lovely early Sean Bean performance. Wittgenstein is, and this should not be possible, a good biopic of Ludwig Wittgenstein, with colorwork based on Wittgenstein's own theories about color. Jubilee has aged somewhat but is a good snapshot of punk, and I haven't seen Sebastiane or War Requiem or The Last of England. My favorite is probably Caravaggio but it's a really tough call.

The third most findable Greenaway is The Draughtsman's Contract, which I do recommend, though it is intentionally a film that does not want to be likable-- just very very good.

I have not seen any of either Tarr or Kieslowski! Do you have recommended starting points for either?

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the Jarman survey, which is most intriguing. I will begin with Edward II. And I will see if I can get the Greenaway you mention. Sometimes films need to be unlikeable in order to be free to explore what they need to explore and how they want to explore it, but I wonder if that's the same thing as deliberately setting out to be unlikeable. (I suppose the preceding statement is a more than slightly goofy way of putting it, but I'm too tired to rewrite it properly; forgive me.) On what side, as it were, does The Draughtsman's Contract come down? Or is my distinction too crude or off the mark to be relevant?

Krzysztof Kieślowski is one of my two or three all-time favorite directors, but I have yet to see anything by Bela Tarr, though I have a friend for whom Tarr is his favorite director and I am definitely very intrigued by everything I've about him -- so I was curious in very different ways about whether you knew or liked either man's work.

Krzysztof Kieślowski's work manages to be of more than sterling quality pretty much throughout his career. He started as a documentary filmmaker in Communist Poland in the late 60s but by the late 70s was so disturbed by the invasive aspects of that kind of filmmaking that he felt he could be more honest and more truthful by making filmic fictions -- and it was definitely the made-up stories in his feature films that got him into trouble with the Communist authorities; he was jailed briefly for his film Blind Chance (1981), which was banned for four years. Kieślowski wrote or co-wrote all his feature films. Everything from Camera Buff (1979) to the Three Colors Trilogy (1993-4) is superb. My personal favorite is The Double Life of Veronique (1991), which only grows more profound with each new viewing, but I find that quality to be the case with everything of his I've watched. His greatest masterpiece is almost certainly The Decalogue (1988), a ten-hour film composed of one-hour episodes, done for Polish television and the last of his work before the fall of Communism in Poland. The Three Colors Trilogy, Blue, White, and Red are quite wonderful as well. But for its pervasive feeling-tone of sensuous mystery and enigma, I guess I'd suggest The Double Life as a great starting point -- it was the first film of his I ever saw, and I fell in love with it, and with his work, on that first viewing. (Kieślowski died in 1996, at age 54, from lung cancer -- he smoked pretty much nonstop from his teenage years on.)

[sovay]

Also, I have been wanting to see Pasolini's Medea (1969) since I knew about Maria Callas. It's her only film role. It's Euripides. It's supposed to be astonishing.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see it!