Lost in the Movies: documentary

Showing posts with label documentary. Show all posts

63 Up

(I covered the rest of the Up series in 2016.)

The ninth entry of the Up documentary series finds itself - if not necessarily its subjects - hovering in a place of uncertainty. For fifty-five years, director Michael Apted at least attempted to interview fourteen British individuals (although a few declined to participate in certain entries) beginning when they were schoolchildren with the intended one-off 7 Up! - which Apted worked on under the direction of Paul Almond for a BBC program. Heading into 63 Up, I expected a more melancholy meditation on aging, loss, and disappointment although I'm not sure why. After all, these people are not quite elderly yet - many of them are still working even if they discuss imminent retirement, several have children still living at home, and more than a few mention parents who died only very recently or who are still alive in their eighties and nineties. There will, inevitably, be an end of the road for the entire ensemble but if they are closer now to that end than their beginning there is still a ways to go. Perhaps my anticipation stemmed from vague knowledge of the exceptions to that general case: two participants have passed away by now (one is mentioned in the film itself, the other shown in ill health). Above all, however, I think it was Apted's own passing which informed my initial impression. More than anything else going forward, the absence of the series' guiding hand casts doubt upon future films.

For the third week in a row (and the last time, although two more entries remain) I'm covering a film I'd never seen before as part of my Sight & Sound podcast miniseries. Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up (1990) mixes fly-on-the-wall documentary, manipulative "reality" filmmaking, and re-creation in its depiction of the humble Hossain Sabzian, a cinephile who ingratiates himself with the affluent, cultured Ahankhah family by posing as famed film director Mahmoud Makhmalbaf. Arrested and put on trial for this con, he offers unusual defenses - some perhaps suggested by Kiarostami (who shows up to film the court proceedings and becomes part of the process himself). And amazingly, both the defendant and the family pushing for his prosecution agree to play themselves for Kiarostami's camera, re-imagining their own fateful encounters. Like the two films I discussed previously - Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (with guest Ashley Brandt) and Beau Travail - this is a highly unusual art film pushing the boundaries of cinematic storytelling. No wonder Close-Up placed slightly higher on the directors' list than the critics'; in narrative, theme, and self-conscious approach, this is a filmmaker's film.

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Both highly relevant and very much a time capsule, Adam Curtis' The Power of Nightmares depicts the War on Terror as a clash between two delusional, unpopular ideologies attempting to replace unfashionable hope with paranoid fear. Curtis' polemical approach involves not just interviews and illustrative b-roll but also propulsive editing of heavily manipulated found footage with immersive electronic pop soundtracks; this is my podcast's third stylistically unconventional, thematically retrospective 2010s documentary in a row (after Heart of a Dog and Blue Velvet Revisited). Coming back to the movie now, I can actually relate to it much more than when I initially watched a few years after its release. Its portrait of an American empire willfully blinded by hubris resonates with how I see the world at present. But Nightmares is also a portrait of a neoconservative right wing that differs from the more cynical, less ambitious national "populism" of the current moment. Even the film's one dip into domestic culture war (a curiously outdated view of the Clinton impeachment) emphasizes the idiosyncrasy. I found the film fascinating to dig into given the passage of time; while the emphasis is more on 9/11, Afghanistan, and domestic prosecutions (as well as the Islamic fundamentalism and Cold War context that birthed the neocons and al Qaeda), the recent twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War makes this episode feels even more apropos.

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When David Lynch descended on a midsize North Carolina city to shoot his distinctive, out-of-time tribute to - and/or subversion of - small town Americana, he meticulously determined what we'd see and how we'd see it. Blue Velvet strains the eighties zeitgeist through a filter of fifties nostalgia and Lynch's own particular aesthetic tastes but a West German documentarian was there on location to capture the process of the director's creativity - and also the raw material of the world around the 1985 production. Watching this documentary for the first time a couple years ago (this review was recorded immediately afterwards), I was completely taken with this contrast - a peek into the world as it was when I was a toddler - as well as by Peter Braatz's moody, meditative, avant-garde take on this footage, so striking yet distinct from Lynch himself. Originally dubbed No Frank in Lumberton when it was assembled as an even more experimental program for German TV, the Super 8 footage was re-born when Braatz was inspired by music from the group Cult With No Name and decided to mix black-and-white still photos, aestheticized titles, and voice tracks into a new assembly. The result was much more widely distributed than the original when it was released for the thirtieth anniversary of Blue Velvet. This podcast provides the perfect complement to my upcoming episode on connections between Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks on the Twin Peaks Cinema feed (scheduled for March 15; this cross-post link will be active the next morning). It also can be listened to as a sequel to my earlier Lost in the Movies podcast on Blue Velvet as a standalone film.

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An experimental documentary as much imaginative memoir and meditation as study of certain times and places (including New York in the wake of 9/11), Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog is a fascinating tour de force. I covered it originally for patrons in 2018 as one of my earliest podcasts (so please forgive the echo-y sound quality and the different vantage point on the passage of time). This was a few years after its release and a few more years after the death of Laurie's husband, legendary Velvet Underground leader Lou Reed. His presence haunts the film without ever being made explicit; instead, Anderson focuses on the passing of her beloved pet dog. Among the fascinating themes and subjects onscreen are Anderson's recollections of childhood accidents including a horrifying diving disaster (as well as the consequent stay in the burn ward of a children's hospital) and a fall through thin ice; the different vibes of War on Terror-era Manhattan vs. coastal Northern California; the storage of NSA spying information in massive desert facilities compared to the pyramids; and the formal approach to a dazzling visual experience with and without the accompaniment of storytelling narration.

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Listen to Episode 93: Coffee and Cigarettes (+ feedback/media/work updates including Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Russian Revolution, failures of the decadent right, history of malls, archive reading: Lady and the Tramp & more)

Once again, a fairly random viewing - one of just two movies I watched in July - provides the film in focus to anchor this month's podcast. I happened to see Jim Jarmusch's quirky Coffee and Cigarettes because I was visiting someone who had an old DVD of it onhand and was intrigued by the title. Reflecting on both its seventeen-year production (assembled into an anthology from disparately shot but aesthetically similar short films) and the nineteen years since its release, I'm able to explore themes that always interest me regarding the passage of time - alongside other threads working their way through these blackout sketches of (usually) two actors playing themselves in a fictional, often contentious, conversation.

There were a lot of political topics dredged up by this month's podcast recommendations, including the legacy of revolutions, what Boris Johnson's resignation tells us about the state of the right and its appeal, and how shopping malls have evolved as cultural touchstones. There's a bit more feedback this time than last time (all from YouTube), another Marvel movie to discuss in brief capsule form, and for the second month in a row I have an essay on a fifties classic to share from my archive.

Meanwhile, having finally caught up to June's Twin Peaks character studies in late July, I caught up to July's just a few days into August. That's an improvement at least, and now I'm on pace to provide three advance entries to patrons every month going forward. This trio was particularly striking despite the low ranking, not only for the characters' onscreen antics but also the performers' offscreen lives...

EXCLUSIVE advance: TWIN PEAKS Character Series #80 - 78

(#83 - 81 already published)

(become a patron to discover their identities)

I introduced and cross-posted the full conversation on the site last week but actually the one post to make it up on schedule in July was Part 2 of this exchange with the hosts of the weird fiction podcast Counter Esperanto for the $5/month tier's reward...

PATREON EXCLUSIVE: Part 2 of Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Jubel Brosseau & Karl Eckler

Podcast Line-Ups for...

Listen to Episode 92: The Power of Nightmares (+ feedback/media/work updates: King Kong vs. Godzilla, In the Line of Fire, political shifts, the Iraq War, archive reading: An American in Paris & more)

Just a few weeks after my last (belated) monthly podcast, there wasn't much to update in terms of viewing, listening, or behind-the-scenes work, but I did have one film/series I wanted to zoom in on. Adam Curtis' eccentric 2004 BBC program The Power of Nightmares offers a cutting, hypnotic audiovisual analysis of the dance between American neoconservatives and Middle Eastern Islamists which eventually led to the War on Terror. I'd seen, and never forgotten, the first chapter not long after it was first released. This time I watched the whole thing and reflected on it from a different standpoint than I had at the time, further to the left and more deeply skeptical of the government line on Al Qaeda (even so, some of the wild discrepancies and overreaches that the film highlights remain astounding). Hopefully I can watch more Curtis films in the near future; I've been fascinated by his style for a long time but never really explored his work. A year ago, my all too ambitious plans included a chapter-by-chapter reaction to the director's recent analysis of the left's ambitions and failures, Can't Get You Out of My Head. Perhaps that will be next in my exploration - when I finally find some time in my schedule.

Elsewhere, I offer some capsules on a handful of films I watched in June, riff on similar Bush era themes based on some podcasts I listened to (touching on my own political evolution - or evolutions), and end the podcast on a lighter note with a reading from my past work on a Gene Kelly musical, albeit one that also toys with issues of war, loss, and wistful regrets.

As I struggled to keep up with various projects, particularly Lost in Twin Peaks, I fell behind on the latest patron reward: the presentation of three character studies each month. Only several weeks after the month ended could I finally share the first one (the other two followed the next week, and I'm already moving ahead on July's advances so they won't suffer the same fate). Despite the delay, this represents a major breakthrough. Remarkably, I never wrote a single character study in all the years since The Return - despite my oft-stated goals. That half-decade was spent, when I focused on this work at all, slowly putting together the posts on minor characters and the like. Hopefully from now on I can move forward at a much quicker pace (on a positive note, when I finally got down to writing it, the first piece didn't take very long at all). (This cross-post accidentally went up last week with most of what you see here, and the reason I removed it and re-publushed today was because two these character studies were not yet ready.)

I won't discuss who these entries cover - the public gets to find that out if/when the series begins official publication in early 2023. But here's where you can find out, and read them ahead of time...

TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance entries for June: #86 / #85 & #84

(become a patron to discover their identities)

following the announcement of

Update: June character entries delayed, should be coming soon

I've already cross-posted both parts of my conversation with Cameron Cloutier in a separate entry, but just to be thorough, here's the $5/month exclusive that went up in June...

PATREON EXCLUSIVE: Part 2 of Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Cameron Cloutier

Podcast Line-Ups for...