My friend Skye Sepp brought over this enter­tain­ing Dan­ish doc­u­men­tary, a bit of truf­fle for film buffs. Back in 1967, young direc­tor Jør­gen Leth made a short film called “The Per­fect Human”. It was the kind of clever, enig­mat­ic, “arty” thing that appealed to the sen­si­bil­i­ty of the time, then became a chest­nut of short film fes­ti­vals and film schools, much like Nor­man MacLaren’s films, here in Cana­da. Looked at now, you can see that it has an ele­gance to it, most­ly because of the superb per­for­mances of the only two actors, Claus Nis­sen and Majken Algren Nielsen. Nis­sen, appar­ent­ly, impro­vised most of his most effec­tive moments. Watch it online here.

Fast for­ward to 2003. Leth is in semi-retire­ment in Haiti, and his friend/colleague Lars von Tri­er dares him to make five “remakes” of the influ­en­tial short film. In each case, he will demand “obstruc­tions” — absurd restric­tions and demands meant to chal­lenge the direc­tor’s inge­nu­ity. The film cuts between von Tri­er pre­sent­ing his obstruc­tions [“No sets”; “You have to film it in some­place dis­gust­ing­ly hor­ri­ble”; “You have to remake it as a car­toon”; “You have to act in it your­self”…], the result­ing remakes, and frag­ments of the orig­i­nal film. The result is a fas­ci­nat­ing look into how a cre­ative film-mak­er works, with numer­ous moments of spon­ta­neous humour.

(Mac­Far­lane / Ring 2001) Fam­i­ly Guy: Ep.38 — Fish Out of Water
(Williamson 1901) Stop Thief!
(Williamson 1901) Fire!
(1901) The George­town Loop
(Méliês 1902) A Trip To The Moon
(1903) Sky­scrap­ers Of New York City
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I saw the new Trek opus with artist Taral Wayne, in a the­atre filled, for some rea­son, with Rus­sians, who laughed and cheered when­ev­er the char­ac­ter Chekov spoke. I lat­er learned from a Russ­ki friend that the actor, Anton Yelchin, though him­self a born Russ­ian, was giv­ing the char­ac­ter a broad Pol­ish accent! I was actu­al­ly rather pleased with the film, which man­aged to strike a bal­ance between pro­vid­ing some­thing new and remain­ing with­in the Sacred Canon, and though the plot and events were ludi­crous­ly implau­si­ble, the humour and enthu­si­asm with which the actors por­trayed their roles made one for­get it. An alter­nate time-line gave license for the devi­a­tions from the back-his­to­ry implied in the pre­vi­ous films. Leonard Nimoy per­formed with remark­able dignity.

It’s been fif­teen years since I’ve seen Miloš For­man’s satir­i­cal mas­ter­piece. I found it even more plea­sur­able on sec­ond view­ing. Filmed with an ama­teur cast of real fire­men, in a small North Bohemi­an town, the film con­tains absolute­ly noth­ing overt­ly polit­i­cal. But it’s atti­tude was sub­tly sub­ver­sive in a way that enraged the rul­ing Com­mu­nists, who declared it “banned for­ev­er”, and even threat­ened For­man with ten years impris­on­ment for “dam­age to the state”. For­man was in Paris when the Sovi­ets invad­ed, short­ly after, so he defect­ed and became a pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. He sub­se­quent­ly had a dis­tin­guished direct­ing career, with films such as One Flew Over the Cuck­oo’s Nest and Amadeus. But none of these block­busters can equal the vital­i­ty and orig­i­nal­i­ty of this ear­ly effort. It’s dif­fi­cult to explain why this sim­ple, episod­ic piece of nat­u­ral­ism is so effec­tive. You just have to watch it. There are so many scenes where the com­e­dy emerges painful­ly from plain real­i­ty, such as when the cam­era scans the bored expres­sions of the girls being parad­ed before the aging judges in a ludi­crous beau­ty con­test, the bril­liant­ly timed sequence when it’s dis­cov­ered that all the raf­fle prizes have been stolen, or the fire­men mov­ing a crotch­ety old man clos­er to his burn­ing home to keep him warm. This is not bit­ter or accus­ing satire. In fact, the film’s approach is ten­der and for­giv­ing. And per­haps that is what infu­ri­at­ed the cor­rupt Com­mu­nist oli­garchs most of all.

(Jones 1975) A Boy and His Dog
(Muy­bridge / 1877–85 ) Homage To Ead­weard Muybridge
(Edi­son 1894) Sandow [the Strong Man] Read more »

This inter­est­ing fan­ta­sy was filmed in India, Roma­nia, Namib­ia, South Africa, Czech Repub­lic, Indone­sia, and oth­er places. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is superb, remind­ing me of the crisp images of James Wong Howe. The direc­tor, Tarsem Singh, was try­ing for an adult approach to a psy­cho­log­i­cal para­ble about sui­cide and death, illu­mi­nat­ed by some of the most beau­ti­ful land­scape and archi­tec­ture in the world. It’s thick with cul­tur­al, sci­en­tif­ic, and his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences best enjoyed by a well-read audi­ence, though it can be enjoyed well enough with­out notic­ing them.

The sto­ry: in 1920’s Hol­ly­wood, a stunt­man recov­ers from a seri­ous injury, and rejec­tion in love, in a hos­pi­tal. Anoth­er patient is a young Roman­ian immi­grant girl (per­haps ten years old). In order to bribe the child to get him mor­phine pills with which to com­mit sui­cide, the stunt­man tells her a fan­tas­tic tale, with the flavour of the Mas­navi or the Ara­bi­an Nights. The films inter­cuts to rep­re­sen­ta­tions of this tale, which employ real land­scapes and set­tings with fan­tas­tic cos­tume and mag­i­cal effects.

This film appeared and passed unno­ticed in 2006.

If you have a cer­tain frame of mind (which I have, and share with my friend William Brei­d­ing), you will nat­u­ral­ly be drawn to the remark­able 1913 nov­el by Alain-Fournier [Hen­ri Alban-Fournier, 1886–1914]. Le Grand Meaulnes is just­ly con­sid­ered a mas­ter­piece of French lit­er­a­ture, and it cap­tures the sub­tle ten­sion between dream and real­i­ty, and between desire and ful­fill­ment. The main char­ac­ter, Augustin Meaulnes, a sev­en­teen-year-old stu­dent, gets lost and encoun­ters a woman he falls in love with, then can’t find her, an event that deter­mines the sub­se­quent sto­ry. But the tale is told from the point of view of his fif­teen-year-old friend François Seurel, and it’s this tech­nique that makes the sto­ry bril­liant, because the real point of the sto­ry is what it all means to Seurel. It’s an ele­gant, pre­cise­ly writ­ten tale, and the author’s obvi­ous genius was almost imme­di­ate­ly extin­guished on the bat­tle­fields of World War I. Read more »

Har­lan Ellison’s post-apoc­a­lyp­tic black com­e­dy was writ­ten in 1969, and filmed in 1975, at the tail end of the wave of Hol­ly­wood eccen­tric films that briefly came out of Hol­ly­wood (after which things went back to Busi­ness As Usu­al). It is rea­son­ably faith­ful to the sto­ry, and appar­ent­ly won Ellison’s approval, except for the last line spo­ken in the film. Elli­son felt it this line was mysogin­ist, a crit­i­cism that had been unjust­ly made against the sto­ry. The kind of bit­ter, cyn­i­cal humour that was com­mon­place at the time prob­a­bly does­n’t sit will with the audi­ences of today. The satir­i­cal dystopia of white-face-paint­ed oli­garchs rul­ing a Walt Dis­ney­ish Tope­ka, Kansas in an under­ground refuge will prob­a­bly just puz­zle any­one under thir­ty. But this kind of humour, updat­ed in imagery, might be on the verge of a come-back. The lead actor, Don John­son, lat­er went on to star in the tele­vi­sion Mia­mi Vice. Jason Robards, a vet­er­an star from the 1950s, played the sin­is­ter ruler of the under­ground Tope­ka. Under-rat­ed vet­er­an actor Tim McIn­tyre pro­vid­ed the voice of Blood, the tele­path­ic dog.