Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)

~ Melissa Tamminga

The following is a loose transcript of a presentation I gave on Meek’s Cutoff, a film that was part of the Pickford Film Center’s repertory series, West of What?!, that ran from June 2017-May 2018. The presentation included a slideshow; the images below correspond to the slideshow images.


Meek

Good afternoon and welcome to the screening of the Kelly Reichardt’s 2010 film, Meek’s Cutoff.

Today’s film is a part of the Pickford’s West of What?! Westerns series, and, so before we begin the film, I’m going to talk for a little while about the film and its place in this series.

The Westerns genre is, of course, a significant part of the American cinematic landscape, and it was, for a certain period, enormously popular.

Between 1930-1954, approximately 2,700 Westerns were released. (Source: http://www.b-westerns.com/graphs.htm )

 

Meek's Slide 1

The Westerns genre, though, contained some troubling ideas or myths that are important to recognize.

For example,

  • The genre often promoted myths of westward expansion – the idea of Manifest Destiny – this sort of God-given right (to white people) for westward expansion into the indigenous peoples’ land.
  • It often defined a very narrow, traditional view of masculinity
  • It presented often absurd, gender stereotypes for women. Women were often depicted as purely domestic beings, side characters mostly useful as a civilizing force over men
  • It often normalized genocide, specifically of Native Americans

One of the most interesting things about Westerns is that the popularity of the genre might have a lot more to do with how many Americans tend to see and explain themselves (Looking at Movies, Barsam and Monahan), rather than with a connection to historical accuracy or to the true, often troubling, complexity of our country’s checkered history.

So one of the goals of the West of What?! series – given these things – has been to consider the problematic ideas or ideologies in the Western genre both by looking at Westerns that contain them and by looking at Westerns that subvert them in some way.  Continue reading “Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)” →

Manhunt (John Woo, 2017)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

manhunt001

After a decade in which all he put out were two two-part epics, one of which is great (Red Cliff) the other of which is half-great (The Crossing), it’s nice to see John Woo relax back into the kind of goofy genre fare that has always been his comfort zone. The plot is too complicated by half, with Zhang Hanyu framed by a pharmaceutical research company for murder because he wants to quit being their lawyer, or something, with a dogged cop played by Masaharu Fukuyama on his trail along with a variety of assassins. But the two leads are solid (Zhang you recall from Tsui Hark’s The Taking of Tiger Mountain and Dante Lam’s Operation Red Sea, and Fukuyama from the Koreeda Hirokazu movies Like Father, Like Son and The Third Murder (coming soon to SIFF)) and they’re surrounded by all kinds of women: an earnest heartbroken potential love interest and a callow go-getter on the good side, and assassins of both the cold-blooded and heart of gold variety on the less good side (and wow is it both weird and a lot of fun to see John’s daughter Angeles Woo flying around as the more ruthless killer. She had a small part in The Crossing, but she almost steals the movie here). There’s even a small part for Yasuaki Kurata, enjoying a bit of a renaissance lately with key roles as well in Gordon Chan’s God of War and Chapman To’s The Empty Hands (also coming soon to SIFF). The action is exciting, with some truly exceptional moments, the rest of it is tolerable. In the battle of great 80s Hong Kong auteurs taking on corruption in the 21st Century medical-industrial complex, Woo is an easy winner over Ringo Lam.

Friday May 4 – Thursday May 10

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

Meek’s Cutoff at the Pickford Film Center

Kelly Reichardt’s minimalist Western, about a lost wagon train and the man who thinks he knows the way to safety, was one of the best films of 2010, with a strong performance from frequent Reichardt star Michelle Williams and a haunting sound design. It will be playing for one show only this Sunday at the Pickford in Bellingham. And introducing it will be Seattle Screen Scene’s own Melissa Tamminga. If the commute up north is a bit too far for you, another weird Western is playing Wednesday night at the Grand Illusion: Sergio Corbucci’s classic The Great Silence, starring Klaus Kinski and Jean-Louis Trintignant. And that show will be introduced one-time SSS contributor, Scarecrow Video‘s Matt Lynch.

Playing This Week:

AMC Alderwood:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Thurs Our Review

Ark Lodge Cinemas:

Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005) Fri-Thurs
Galaxy Quest (Dean Parisot, 1999) Fri-Thurs
Director’s Cut (Adam Rifkin, 2016) Thurs Only

Central Cinema:

Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki, 1989) Fri-Tues Our Podcast Subtitled Sat, Sun & Tues
Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977) Fri-Tues

SIFF Egyptian:

RBG (Julie Cohen & Betsy West) Fri-Mon, Weds & Thurs

Century Federal Way:

Daana Paani (Tarnvir Singh Jagpal) Fri-Thurs
Traffik (Deon Taylor) Fri-Thurs

Grand Cinema:

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
The Leisure Seeker (Paolo Virzì) Fri-Thurs
Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh) Fri-Thurs
The Green Fog (Guy Maddin) Sat Only Our Review
Keep the Change (Rachel Israel) Tues Only

Grand Illusion Cinema:

Ismael’s Ghosts (Arnaud Desplechin) Fri-Thurs
The Devil and Father Amorth (William Friedkin) Fri-Sun
Bungo Stray Dogs: Dead Apple (Takuya Igarashi) Sat & Sun Only
The Great Silence (Sergio Corbucci, 1968) Weds Only Intro by Matt Lynch

Cinemark Lincoln Square:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Thurs Our Review
RBG (Julie Cohen & Betsy West) Fri-Thurs
Naa Peru Surya (Vakkantham Vamsi) Fri-Thurs
Bharat Ane Nenu (Koratala Siva) Fri-Thurs
102 Not Out (Umesh Shukla) Fri-Thurs
Cycle (Prakash Kunte) Sun Only

Regal Meridian:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Thurs Our Review
RBG (Julie Cohen & Betsy West) Fri-Thurs

Northwest Film Forum:

Salesman (Albert & David Maysles, & Charlotte Zwerin) Fri-Sun
Half Life in Fukushima (Mark Olexa & Francesca Scalisi) Fri-Sun, Weds & Thurs
The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) Sat Only
The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 1968) Weds & Thurs Only

AMC Pacific Place:

A or B (Ren Pengyuan) Fri-Thurs
The Trough (Nick Cheung) Fri-Thurs

Regal Parkway Plaza:

Never Not Love You (Antoinette Jadaone) Fri-Thurs

Pickford Film Center:

Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010) Sun Only Intro by Melissa Tamminga
The Personals (Chen Kuo-Fu, 1998) Tues Only Intro by Sam Ho

AMC Seattle:

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh) Fri-Thurs
Foxtrot (Samuel Maoz) Fri-Thurs

Seattle Art Museum:

Stage Fright (Alfred Hitchcock, 1950) Thurs Only

SIFF Film Center:

Cézanne – Portraits of a Life (Phil Grabsky) Fri-Sun

AMC Southcenter:

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review

Regal Thornton Place:

Bungo Stray Dogs: Dead Apple (Takuya Igarashi) Sat & Sun Only
The Boxcar Children – Surprise Island (Mark A.Z. Dippé, Anna Chi & Daniel Chuba) Tues Only

SIFF Uptown:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Tues, Thurs Our Review
The Endless (Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead) Fri-Weds
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (Sophie Fiennes) Fri-Weds
1945 (Ferenc Török) Fri-Thurs

Varsity Theatre:

Final Portrait (Stanley Tucci) Fri-Thurs
Love After Love (Russell Harbaugh) Fri-Thurs
The Boxcar Children – Surprise Island (Mark A.Z. Dippé, Anna Chi & Daniel Chuba) Tues Only

In Wide Release:

Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony & Joe Russo) Our Review
Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg) Our Review
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson) Our Review
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler) Our Review

Friday April 27 – Thursday May 3

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

Isao Takahata at the SIFF Uptown

It would take something special to wrest control of our Featured Film spot from the Northwest Film Forum, especially considering they have the most intersting new film of the week (Lucrecia Martel’s Zama) and a pair of excellent repertory films (The Third Man and The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach). But SIFF has done it with a special, one show Saturday morning only, presentation of the late, great director Isao Takahata’s My Neighbors the Yamadas. It’s the most underrated his work for Studio Ghibli, and endlessly inventive adaptation of a comic strip about a Japanese family. Like all Takahata’s best work, it’s weird and funny and almost surprisingly poignant.

Playing This Week:

AMC Alderwood:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Thurs Our Review

Ark Lodge Cinemas:

Basket Case (Frank Henenlotter, 1982) Thurs Only

Central Cinema:

Sister Act (Emile Ardolino, 1992) Fri-Weds
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (Shinichirō Watanabe, 2001) Fri-Weds

SIFF Egyptian:

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (Sophie Fiennes) Fri-Thurs
RBG (Julie Cohen & Betsy West) Starts Thurs

Century Federal Way:

Bhai Taru Singh (Sukhwinder Singh) Fri-Thurs
Labyrinth (Jim Henson, 1986) Sun & Weds Only

Grand Cinema:

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
The Leisure Seeker (Paolo Virzì) Fri-Thurs
Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh) Fri-Thurs
Journey’s End (Saul Dibb) Fri-Thurs
Mystery Screening (???) Sat Only
Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, 2010) Sun Only
A Bag of Marbles (Christian Duguay) Tues Only
East Side Sushi (Anthony Lucero) Weds Only
Felix (Roberta Durrant, 2013) Thurs Only

Grand Illusion Cinema:

Ismael’s Ghosts (Arnaud Desplechin) Fri-Thurs
Cinema Minneapolis Sat & Sun Only
Bungo Stray Dogs: Dead Apple (Takuya Igarashi) Weds, and Next Sat & Sun Only

Cinemark Lincoln Square:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Achari America Yatra (G. Nageswara Reddy) Fri-Thurs
Bharat Ane Nenu (Koratala Siva) Fri-Thurs
Diya (Karu) (Kanam) (A. L. Vijay) Fri-Thurs In Tamil or Telugu
Labyrinth (Jim Henson, 1986) Sun & Weds Only

Regal Meridian:

Labyrinth (Jim Henson, 1986) Sun, Tues & Weds Only

Northwest Film Forum:

Zama (Lucrecia Martel) Fri-Thurs Our Review
The Judge (Erika Cohn) Fri & Sat Only
The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) Sat Only
The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 1968) Weds & Thurs Only

Paramount Theatre:

Ella Cinders (Alfred E. Green, 1926) Mon Only Live Score

Regal Parkway Plaza:

Never Not Love You (Antoinette Jadaone) Fri-Thurs
Finding Your Feet (Richard Loncraine) Fri-Thurs

AMC Seattle:

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh) Fri-Thurs

Seattle Art Museum:

Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941) Thurs Only

SIFF Film Center:

Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh) Fri-Weds
Where is Kyra? (Andrew Dosunmu) Fri-Thurs

Regal Thornton Place:

Labyrinth (Jim Henson, 1986) Sun, Tues & Weds Only

SIFF Uptown:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Tues, Thurs Our Review
The Endless (Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead) Fri-Tues, Thurs
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
My Neighbors the Yamadas (Isao Takahata, 1999) Sat Only

Varsity Theatre:

Final Portrait (Stanley Tucci) Fri-Thurs
Love After Love (Russell Harbaugh) Fri-Thurs

In Wide Release:

Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony & Joe Russo) Our Review
Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg) Our Review
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson) Our Review
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler) Our Review

Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

ZAMA

“What is dead may never die.”

The long-awaited latest film from Argentine director Lucrecia Martel (The Headless Woman, La Ciénega) opens this week at the Northwest Film Forum. It’s set sometime in the late 18th Century, in an unnamed Spanish colony in South America. Daniel Giménez Cacho plays Diego de Zama, an American-born magistrate who very much wants to get away, back to his family (from whom he hasn’t heard, as the film begins, in 14 months), or transferred out of the ramshackle outpost he’s assigned to and into something resembling a city. Zama though will be frustrated at every turn, and the film is a chronicle of his long, slow disintegration as he is ignored, confounded, ridiculed and betrayed by his fellow colonists and swallowed up whole by the flora, fauna, and pestilence of the land he’s invaded and so disdains. Early in the film, Zama is told by a child suffering from cholera that he is a god, born old but fated to never die. His progress, such as it is, recalls other descents into the wilderness, Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, Joesph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja, and so on, with the notable exception that for the majority of the film, Zama actually doesn’t journey anywhere, at least not spatially.

Based on a novel by Antonio di Benedetto, which I own but have not read, Zama is a slippery film: half allegory, half deadpan comedy, half realist fever dream. Giménez Cacho drifts through the film to the sounds of mid-century Brazilian guitar duo Los Indios Tabajaras (whose “Always In My Heart” you can also hear in Wong Kar-wai’s Days of Being Wild, a very different kind of film about a very different kind of jungle, that nonetheless shares Zama’s sense of aimless alienation). His Zama never seems to understand what is happening to him or why, he’s only apparently motivated by the desire to leave, or, alternately, the lust for women (only to be satisfied, if at all, off-screen). He is a magistrate, but from what we see not a very good one. He attempts to romance a fellow official’s wife, but is endlessly rebuffed. He tries to defend the young girls at his inn from a thief who may not have been uninvited. Time passes by while his entreaties to the governor for a transfer are endlessly delayed. Martel gives us no real markers for the passage of time, outside of Giménez Cacho’s physical deterioration. His physical state matches that of his surroundings: out of favor with the government he is evicted, and holed up in a hovel (that may be haunted) he contracts a fever. Or maybe he’s had it all along, or maybe he hasn’t ever really been there: he seems to have an extraordinary talent for not being noticed—even the servants can’t seem to remember his name.

Eventually, Zama makes it out of town, but not in the direction he’d hoped to be going. He joins a party searching for the notorious fugitive Vicuña Porto, a man held responsible for pretty much every crime in the area, fictional or not. The name has followed Zama from the beginning, not unlike the llama that stalks behind him during a meeting with the governor, the sounds and images of wildlife ever-present, even in the heart of the colonial community. On their journey, the men, of course, run afoul of the native population, who act mysteriously (one group wears masks, the other paints themselves orange and forcibly paint the Spaniards as well), but not with any kind of special hostility. Throughout the film, the natives, free and enslaved, linger in the background, as workers and servants, eying the colonists but rarely interacting with them. They are, like the environment itself, the force of otherness that torments Zama just as much as the other colonists. There’s no escape into nature for him, nor to the city. No chance for assimilation, either among the Spanish, or among the natives. He is doomed to in-betweenness: neither European nor America, urban or rural, civilized or wild, alive or dead.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018, Anthony & Joe Russo)

~ Ryan Swen ~ 1 Comment

wakanda

It is rare to find a film that so “neatly,” so thoroughly encapsulates not just a single mode of filmmaking, but the entire Hollywood apparatus and a national (almost international) culture to boot. Yet Avengers: Infinity War is just that: in theory and largely in practice, the culmination of a decade-long franchise, spanning nineteen films and counting, interweaving innumerable plot-lines and characters, all united against a single adversary. By design, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in no way limited to this, connected as it is in both narrative and fandom terms to a vast comic-book tradition as well as the cultural expectations that come with such a massive enterprise. If it weren’t for the multitude of MCU films yet to come (or that other franchise juggernaut), it might be safe to call this the most hotly anticipated film of the decade, perhaps of the century.

So how does a “single” film handle such expectations? The short, only mostly accurate answer: as well as the individual viewer might expect. I can say with a great deal of confidence that much of one’s enjoyment of almost any MCU film, especially one as pointedly summative as this, is directly related to their engagement with the wider mythological universe. Nevertheless, Avengers: Infinity War offers much in the way of determining just how one relates to this film, its franchise, and indeed modern Hollywood at large.

Continue reading “Avengers: Infinity War (2018, Anthony & Joe Russo)” →

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, 2017)

~ Melissa Tamminga

Joe in shadow

“Where are we going?”
“Wherever you want to go. . . . Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either.”

In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film, Psycho, a past-haunted man cannot escape himself or the violence he has known and inflicted, and he preserves his own guilt and trauma, literally, in the body of his mother. He could not bear to live with her and the man she called her husband, and so he killed her. He could not bear to live without her, and so he keeps her, tucked in her bed, a “boy’s best friend.” It’s an impossible, stunted existence, an embalmed life, where the dead cannot be buried, and it is a life that splits Norman Bates’s identity in two. His body becomes a sort of prison, a site of ever-present struggle between two selves, between life and death, past and present. “We scratch and we claw,” Norman says, “but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.”

Lynne Ramsay’s newest film, You Were Never Really Here, beautifully recalls this earlier cinematic classic both overtly and obliquely.  Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) is a war veteran, a sort of walking dead man like Norman Bates. Joe carries the suffocating horror of his past around in his scarred body while violent images of that past crash, unbidden, into his mind, disrupting his path in any given moment. The voices of the dead, too, and of his younger self force themselves into his ears. His is a divided existence, and his body contains a mind that won’t obey him. “What am I doing?” he mutters to himself when one of these images or voices shatters his attention and a task at hand. He is often, then, cut off from the world around him, the trauma of his mind wrenching him towards itself and away from an exterior, Other reality.   Continue reading “You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, 2017)” →

The Green Fog (Maddin, Johnson, Johnson, 2017)

~ Michael Strenski

the green fog

“San Francisco’s changed. The things that spell San Francisco to me are disappearing fast.” — Gavin Elster, Vertigo, 1958

I’ve never seen Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho. I know the consensus opinion is one of distaste, if not disgust, but from afar I have always kind of respected what I think Van Sant was going for, the experiment behind the film. Can someone take the elements of a stone cold classic and manage to replicate its power? In their bizarre, Canadian way Guy Maddin and his collaborators, Galen and Evan Johnson, have taken the baton from Van Sant with their new film The Green Fog, which uses clips from a century of cinema and television shot entirely in San Francisco to retell the plot of another Hitchcock masterpiece, Vertigo.

And damn it, The Green Fog is Vertigo, albeit filtered through the manic Friday night-to-Saturday morning antics of Joe Dante’s Movie Orgy. (Dick Miller is even in it!) There are clips from ’40s film noir like Dark Passage and scenes from ’70s cop shows like The Streets of San Francisco. (Apparently one episode had Karl Malden dressed as a clown, which gets a surprising amount of mileage here.) Knowing Maddin’s house style there are not as many clips from silent films as one would expect but the filmmakers did include scenes from the mid-’90s David Caruso joint, Jade, so its a wash. However, the joy of The Green Fog comes less from playing I-Spy with the copious array of film clips–this is not Maddin’s Ready Player One–but from seeing how a bunch of disparate moments from all kinds of films can be repurposed to recount one of cinema’s most enduring mysteries.

The experiment could come off as tedious or pretentious in the hands of anyone else but thanks to a concise one-hour running time and the lowbrow high jinks of Messrs. Maddin, Johnson, and Johnson, The Green Fog is a piece of entertaining and hilarious art. A young and dashing Michael Douglas watches video footage of a naked, middle-aged Michael Douglas and nods approvingly. N*Sync shows up for an inexplicable musical interlude. Nicolas Cage screams. But the film is not a farce. It is not taking malicious aim at Vertigo. The filmmakers are playing deliriously with something they love.

The Green Fog works because it chooses to replicate Vertigo specifically. The consensus pick for THE GREATEST FILM OF ALL TIME is perhaps the only choice that would make sense. Because of its placement atop the Sight and Sound poll, Vertigo is required viewing for all budding cinephiles. It has become homework. Like Citizen Kane before it, the distinction as cinema’s ideal makes viewing Vertigo on its own terms difficult. The film has so much baggage. It is getting harder to separate the movie from the accolades and analysis. The Green Fog gives us a new way of coming to Vertigo. It boils the film down to its essence and reminds us what was so intoxicating in the first place.

Friday April 20 – Thursday April 26

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

Abbas Kiarostami and Guy Maddin at the Northwest Film Forum

Once again the NWFF hosts the highlights of the film week, this time with the latest from Canadian weirdo Guy Maddin, The Green Fog, and the final film from the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, 24 Frames. Both are experiments: Maddin’s film reconstructs a version of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo using archival images of San Francisco; while Kiarostami’s imagines what happens before and after a series of 24 still images. Both are essential film events of this year, and you can only catch them this weekend.

Playing This Week:

Ark Lodge Cinemas:

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) Fri-Thurs
Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985) Fri-Mon, Weds-Thurs Our Podcast
Jewel’s Catch One (C. Fitz) Tues Only
The Nightmare Emporium Thurs Only

Central Cinema:

Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, 1986) Fri-Tues
Troll 2 (Claudio Fragasso, 1990) Fri-Tues Hecklevision

SIFF Egyptian:

Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh) Fri-Thurs
Up in Smoke (Lou Adler, 1978) Fri Only

Century Federal Way:

Khido Khundi (Rohit Jugraj Chauhan) Fri-Thurs
Bharat Ane Nenu (Koratala Siva) Fri-Thurs
The Cat Returns (Hiroyuki Morita, 2002) Sun, Mon & Weds Only Subtitled Monday

Grand Cinema:

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
The Leisure Seeker (Paolo Virzì) Fri-Thurs
Finding Your Feet (Richard Loncraine) Fri-Thurs
Foxtrot (Samuel Maoz) Fri-Thurs
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (Zack Snyder, 2010) Sat Only Free Screening
The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1927) Sat Only Our Podcast
Love & Bananas (Ashley Bell) Sun Only
Radio Dreams (Babak Jalali) Tues Only
Whose Streets? (Sabaah Folayan & Damon Davis) Weds Only
Soundtrack for a Revolution (Bill Guttentag & Dan Sturman, 2009) Weds Only
An Inconvenient Sequel (Bonni Cohen & Jon Shenk) Thurs Only Free Screening
Ivan (Alyona Davydova) Thurs Only

Grand Illusion Cinema:

Borg vs. McEnroe (Janus Metz) Sat-Mon Only
Marrowbone (Sergio G. Sánchez) Fri-Thurs
Ichi the Killer (Takashi Miike, 2003) Fri & Sun Only
The Black Gloves and Silken Sleeves (Maria Beatty, 1996 & 2006) Sat Only
Emulsion Manipulations II Tues Only
House of Tomorrow (Peter Livolsi) Thurs Only

Cinemark Lincoln Square:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Beyond the Clouds (Majid Majidi) Fri-Thurs
Bharat Ane Nenu (Koratala Siva) Fri-Thurs
Krishnarjuna Yudham (Merlapaka Gandhi) Fri-Thurs
Rangasthalam (Sukumar) Fri-Thurs
October (Shoojit Sircar) Fri-Thurs
The Cat Returns (Hiroyuki Morita, 2002) Sun, Mon & Weds Only Subtitled Monday

Regal Meridian:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Thurs Our Review
Bharat Ane Nenu (Koratala Siva) Fri-Thurs

Northwest Film Forum:

Green Fog (Guy Maddin) Fri-Sun Only Our Review
24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami) Sat & Sun Only Our Review Our Other Review
The Cat o’Nine Tails (Dario Argento, 1971) Weds Only
Cadence: Cross Section Thurs Only
The Judge (Erika Cohn) Starts Thurs Director in Attendance

AMC Pacific Place:

Final Portrait (Stanley Tucci) Fri-Thurs
Dude’s Manual (Kevin Ko) Fri-Thurs

Paramount Theatre:

Little Annie Rooney (William Beaudine, 1925) Mon Only Live Score

Regal Parkway Plaza:

Never Not Love You (Antoinette Jadaone) Fri-Thurs
Finding Your Feet (Richard Loncraine) Fri-Thurs
The Leisure Seeker (Paolo Virzì) Fri-Thurs

AMC Seattle:

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review
You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Thurs Our Review

Seattle Art Museum:

Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940) Thurs Only

SIFF Film Center:

Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey (Dave O’Leske) Fri-Sun Only
Outside In (Lynn Shelton) Fri-Sun Only Our Review

Regal Thornton Place:

The Cat Returns (Hiroyuki Morita, 2002) Sun, Mon & Weds Only

SIFF Uptown:

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) Fri-Thurs Our Review
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) Fri-Thurs Our Review

Varsity Theatre:

The Leisure Seeker (Paolo Virzì) Fri-Thurs
The Cat Returns (Hiroyuki Morita, 2002) Fri-Thurs

In Wide Release:

Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg) Our Review 
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson) Our Review
Annihilation (Alex Garland) Our Review
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler) Our Review
The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro) Our Review

Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont, 2017)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 1 Comment

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Of all the world’s great folk heroes, Robin Hood and King Arthur, Wong Fei-hung and Sherlock Holmes, the Monkey King and Superman, none has been so well depicted in the cinema as Joan of Arc. Her brief, unbelievable yet true story (believing she’s been sent by God to relieve the siege of Orléans during the Hundred Years War and then install the Dauphin on the throne of France, uniting it against the English, she leaves home at the age of 17 and actually does it; then she’s captured, put on well-documented trial as a heretic, and burned at the stake) is a natural for motion pictures, full of war and violence  and androgyny and craziness and faith. The latest director to tackle the subject, following Dreyer and Rivettte, Bresson and Besson, is Bruno Dumont, and his approach is that of the stately rock opera.

We join Jeannette as she watches her sheep on the banks of the Meuse. She sings laments to God for the suffering of her people, wondering how He can let war happen and if the suffering will ever end. This she discusses, in song, with a friend, another girl of about 13, and a nun. The nun is weirdly played by twins, but only addressed as a singular being, one of the many off-hand oddities that are the film’s strongest point. The songs lack much in the way of melody or catchiness, and tend towards a bland kind of 80s European arena rock sound, which isn’t particularly pleasant, but does provide excellent material for one of Jeannette’s singular moves: in the throes of a religious ecstasy she bangs her head like a true Metallica fan. This and other dance moves, stiff and formal, derived as much from 60s dance crazes as medieval poses, are much more successful at conveying the primal weirdness of Jeannette’s belief and the visions that motivate her than the songs, which all kind of sound the same. The lyrics don’t offer much in the way of new answers to the problem of evil, but they do frame Jeanne’s quest as an essentially nationalistic one. On multiple occasions Jeanne rejects the idea that it would be OK if the English won the war, because then at least there would be peace and people would stop dying. This is unacceptable to Jeanne: God has promised France for the French, and anything less is an affront to Him. Nor does Dumont question the veracity of her visions: this Jeanne is absolutely the instrument of God, and the choreography of the dances, unnatural movements caused by non-diegetic and therefore literally otherworldly music, reinforce this idea of a humanity not in control of its actions, merely the tools of a higher, inexplicable, holy, and hard-rockin’ power.

The first two-thirds of the film, comprising Jeannette’s conversations and hopes for a warlord to rescue France, her vision of three saints anointing herself as that warlord, and her later coming to terms with the quest she must undertake, all take place in the same location, the sandy riverbank with sheep milling about in the background. After a break of three years, and a change of actresses, Jeannette, now Jeanne, convinces her uncle to accompany her to the local noble, from whence she will begin to fulfill her destiny. At this point we move to Jeanne’s house, and the shift in location is abrupt and jarring, as if Dumont couldn’t commit to the conceit of having the entire film set in a single location. Similarly his camera position seems only half-thought out, with Jeannette at times looking directly at us while importuning her God (which is therefore us, I guess), while at other times she addresses the sky, while we and the camera sink low to the ground, the sun behind her head giving her the expected halo: we move from God to worshipper for no apparent reason. It looks cool though.

I was extremely disappointed in the only other Bruno Dumont film I’ve seen, Camille Claudel 1915, which seemed to me to be deeply cruel and managed the remarkable feat of making a Juliette Binoche movie boring. This is much better than that, but I wonder what it might have been in the hands of a director with a more musical soul.