Week #7. Watched the least amount of films in a week that I possibly can; I’ve been knee deep in assignments, so you can’t blame me.
Mystery Road (2013) dir. Ivan Sen
19/04/16
Written for Letterboxd:
Stock standard Australian crime thriller, another that feeds off of the cultural divide between indigenous and non-indigenous citizens. Like No Country For Old Men without the thrills or the wit, though reminiscent in that the protagonist is a rifle-wielding introvert who bears an uncanny resemblance to Josh Brolin–voice and all. Spends all its time in the build up that the climax comes well deserved, but in no way attends to tying the knots that its central mystery unravels; even worse considering I had to watch this for my cinema class’ narrative week. Ouch. Forgettable in the grand scheme of things, but it’s the people, not the dogs, that are the monsters.
BUT, since analysing the film further in class I have come to appreciate it more: I fear I too readily dismissed the fact that it based itself on the fracture between white and non-white Australians (solely because that seems to be what half of all popular Australian films in the past decade have done; though in saying this the examples that I had seem to have slipped my mind. I think I’ll drop the point). I haven’t seen nearly enough Australian films to reject the industry so easily (keen for The Proposition, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Walkabout, among many others) and it doesn’t help that infamous Australian auteur Baz Luhrmann has plagued my neutral standpoint, but again, I’d be willing to reconsider him. We’ll see. ★★★½
California Split (1974) dir. Robert Altman
20/04/16
Altman season is in full bloom; another (slightly faded) but still glorious 35mm original print, which is seemingly the only way to view the film in it’s intended state (copyright with music led to ~5 mins being cut from the home video release; apparently because of Happy Birthday?). Jeff Goldblum has his (literal) 15 seconds of fame in his second feature role (and later appeared in Altman’s 1975 masterpiece Nashville) and he owns every moment. I’ve come to discover that an Altman film is kinda like a live concert; a profound sensory experience, loud and unforgiving, and always inhabited by some of the most absurd people you’ve ever seen–and you can’t help but savour every moment. Truly a riot. Elliott Gould is to the 70s what Clint Eastwood is to the 60s. ★★★★★
Vincent & Theo (1990) dir. Robert Altman
20/04/16
A more commercialised Altman, trimming down his multi-track audio that he has been so famously appreciated for, reducing the zooms (though some are still there, and they’re divine; eg. the scene where Vincent shoots himself in the field: the camera focuses on him painting, zooms out when he walks out into the field, then zooms in on him as he hobbles towards the camera) and moving to focus on the smaller, intimate moments of the larger story at hand. The theatrical cut, a 138 minute feature as opposed to the 4-part, 200 minute TV miniseries, definitely feels sporadic at points, sorely lacking the extra 60 minutes of content. Altman jumps furiously though multiple decades without anything but the onscreen events to guide the audience, in one scene a marriage, and in the next a child; this is not to say that there’s anything wrong with this technique, but Altman employs it constantly and the grand scale that should be achieved in lost into a series of fragmented happenings. ★★★½
Stay tuned. If you want.