Compliance

Shockingly based on true events Compliance is a chilling disturbing film that cannot help but raise some uncomfortable, but important questions about human nature.  The film takes place on a normal busy Friday afternoon in a small town fast food restaurant. The workers are all recognizably human and are no different from anyone of us: The teenagers who dread work, the middle-aged boss who is in love, and the older experienced part-time janitor. Then the phone rings. It is a police officer with unfortunate news. All too quickly an already stressful day takes a dark turn. Within the next couple hours many of these folks lives will be shattered and destroyed. Compliance had the entire audience squirming in their seats, yet no one could budge or leave.  Yet despite the disturbing subject matter no one left the theatre.  It is a tense well-directed film that contains a cast of talented unknowns that all add a dimension of realism to the film. Without their performances Compliance wouldn’t be as successful as it is. I’m not sure if I’d ever watch it again or at least again anytime soon, but I’m thankful for its serious probing of our potentially dangerous instincts to trust other humans above our own moral beliefs.

Excision

Playing as one of the features in the Midnight Sundance Selection Excision is undeniably a lot of fun. High-class art? No. A solid gross shocking unique vision of adolescence? Most definitely. Paula is a stereotypical social outcast whom all the popular girls make fun of. Her relationship with her mother is constantly strained and her Dad is emotionally absent. Her only comfort in life comes from two places: Her younger sister and her psychosexual fantasies that fuel her actions in real life. An example is her own bizarre and sick desire to lose her virginity while she is menstruating. Excision certainly pushes the envelope, but one can’t help but appreciate writer/director Richard Bates understanding of the horror genre and how it can be used to reveal deeper truths. It one looks past all the awkward sex, bloody fantasies, and a fantastically disturbing finale Excision is a story of growing up in a suburban landscape where to be considered a real woman one has to conform to socially constructed rules. Unfortunately Bates has not quite acquired directing skills needed for a full-length theatrical feature. The framing and cinematography gives the film a very cheap and made for TV feel limiting the films ultimate potential.  Still Excision is a quite a fun ride and Bates has a lot of potential as a future horror filmmaker.

Image Sources:

http://www.sundance.org/images/articles/leads/Compliance-Article-1.jpg

http://www.saltlakemagazine.com/site_media/uploads/excision-still.jpg

The golden age of animation for hand-drawn feature-length films was at its zenith at this time period: World War II was over for several years, along with the budget cuts and propaganda films that went with it, so studios could focus on storytelling once again. At the same time, even though dark age limited animation cartoons were starting to make their way into television, they hadn’t impacted feature films yet. These were the 1950s all the way, and gender roles and character qualities then that were considered admirable or at least likeable in a protagonist fall short of modern standards. It’s quite telling that pop psych labels like “Cinderella complex” and “Peter Pan syndrome” are named after characters popularized during this time period.

Cinderella (1950) – USA: Walt Disney

This film is a prime example of how the Disney studio itself went from rags to riches in terms of the art quality: After several package films of recycled animation budgeted during the war years, the studio was solidly in an era of prosperity again. The ornate art style is noticeably better than the late 1940s films: ornate, vaguely set in Spain with high castles and steep staircases. Living vicariously through the talking mice and birds, Cinderella doesn’t stand up for herself the way a more modern Disney princess would, but at least she has little moments of snarky resistance: “Maybe I should interrupt the… music lesson.” Bland Prince Charming has colorful relatives – his father trashes the room like a rock star – and he may have had a different life off-screen once upon a time: “It’s high time he married and settled down,” another character says. Aside from unironically naming her cat Lucifer, Lady Tremaine is one of the less flashy Disney villains. But she is the chillingly realistic, psychologically abusive sort the likes of which we aren’t going to see again until about 1996.

Alice in Wonderland (1951) – USA: Walt Disney

Alice had shown up in earlier Disney shorts, but it took until 1951 until the feature-length film based on Lewis Carroll’s stories was ready to show to the world. Supposedly “Alice in Wonderland” went underappreciated until the late 1960s when the whole psychedelic aesthetic, especially the hookah caterpillar scene, was cool. The story is more episodic than other features – Alice goes from sequence to sequence with characters and subplots having little to do with each other, with the common thread that she is following the white rabbit and the characters she meets are often randomly hostile toward her for no particular reason. If the Cheshire Cat sounds familiar, he is – Sterling Holloway is also the voice of many other Disney characters including Winnie the Pooh. The Queen of Hearts is another interesting villain: pretty much what Lady Tremaine would be if she was the ruler of an anything goes dream world where she could actually get away with all those flamboyant temper tantrums.

The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird (1952) – France: Les Gémeaux

Before steam punk was cool, “The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird” or “Le Roi et l’oiseau” combined medieval monarchy and stately architecture with sophisticated machinery. This film directed by Paul Grimault took decades to finish, but the short 1952 version has been dubbed in English and consigned to dollar store bins – despite its status as a must see for animation students and an influence on Japan’s Studio Ghibli. Quite loosely based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen, the plot has two paintings come to life – a shepherdess and a chimney sweep – in love but on the lam from a creepy image-obsessed king who wants to force the girl to marry him. Romanesque pillars and high-rise elevators are the landscape they have to escape, and there’s even a giant robot, a literal underground hipster and a news broadcast to this more or less medieval fairy tale. The giant bird provides enough slapstick for this highly symbolic head scratcher to pass as a kids’ cartoon, but the creepy king, the painting of the creepy king and all the statues of the creepy king are what visually steal the show.

The Scarlet Flower (1952) – USSR: Soyulzmultfilm

“The Scarlet Flower” is immediately based on a story by Sergey Aksakov, but American audiences would quickly recognize “Beauty and the Beast.” Compared to the 1991 Disney movie, this 1952 feature is a much closer adaptation of the original story – both the general folk tale and the specific Russian version. There are three sisters and an old screenwriting cliché lets you know who the kind protagonist Nastenka (Beauty) is: one sister kicks the cat, one sister laughs while the cat is being kicked, and Nastenka pets the cat. The characters are rotoscoped as part of the socialist realism of USSR cartoons, a movement away from perceived decadence in art, but that didn’t stop the studio producing a movie with an overall gorgeous art style, detailed architecture with Eastern Orthodox churches and other buildings, and interesting lighting techniques with the enchanted beast’s home. The beast is barely shown and portrayed through voiceover.

Peter Pan (1953) – USA: Walt Disney

When you’re a kid watching old Disney movies, a lot of stuff flies over your head… like the blatant Oedipal overtones of Peter and the other lost boys’ relationship with Wendy – which, to be fair, is in the original J.M. Barrie story. And then there were the offensive lyrics from the racist portrayal of Native Americans. But from what I remember growing up, the pirates led by campy Captain Hook were the main draw for kids. I think by the aughts point Disney had caught on to this and got around to making the blockbuster trilogy around a pirate theme, successfully parting those same 90s kids – who had become high school and college kids by then – from their money. Tinkerbell also steals the show as a comic relief and 1950s ideal of beauty that is starting to return (if only nostalgically) with curvy characters like Joan on “Mad Men.”

Animal Farm (1954) – United Kingdom: Halas and Batchelor

The above films could be about the prosperity side of the 1950s: rags to riches princess stories, chase scenes through fascinating modern architecture and upper middle class kids getting adventures out of their system before they can be content with the sensible world of adults. But “Animal Farm,” the first hand drawn animation from the United Kingdom, brings up the Cold War elephant in the room. John Halas and Joy Batchelor were also behind a stop-motion feature film, “Handling Ships,” for World War II. Rather than being based on older source material like the other 1950s cartoons, “Animal Farm” was based on the relatively recent (1946) book like George Orwell. References to communist regimes were obvious enough with the pigs having large poster portraits of themselves and the red décor. The art style is dark, gritty and piercing – an aesthetic that would dominate around the 1970s.

Lady and the Tramp (1955) – USA: Walt Disney

The first of the post-1940s Disney movies to be set in the United States, “Lady and the Tramp” opens in what looks like a Norman Rockwell painting of New England in 1909. The art style is very detailed, down to the carpet and tiles of Darling and Jim Dear’s home – which feels like déjà vu because a lot of houses in the Midwest were built during this time period give or take a hundred years ago. Consistent with the Disney style, the dogs and puppies have a cuter and softer look than the “Animal Farm” characters. The Siamese cats make for another one of the depressingly racist sequences that plagued some of the earlier animated films. Peggy Lee’s song sequences are particularly memorable, and some of the themes and implications are more mature than one would expect in a childrens’ movie. Of course, this was still the Golden Age when movies intended for “general audiences” meant exactly that – more analogous to today’s “safe for work” label than something exclusively for young kids.

Up next: More of the 1950s – early anime, early TV specials, and not all dubs are created equal…

Image Sources:

http://www.collegefashion.net/inspiration/fashion-inspiration-walt-disneys-cinderella/

http://www.matttrailer.com/alice_in_wonderland_1951

http://moncabinetdecuriosites.tumblr.com/post/3813184617/la-bergere-et-le-ramoneur-the-shepherdess-and-the

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/the-scarlet-flower

http://www.listal.com/list/50-great-animated-movies

http://ludumu.blogspot.com/2011/01/animal-farm-1954.html

http://wearecinemaniax.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/100-years-of-movies-in-100-days-day-46-lady-and-the-tramp-1955/

Keep the Lights On

The biggest disappointment I’ve seen thus far at Sundance, Keep the Lights On, is an underdeveloped, drawn-out, poorly-acted film with way too many missed opportunities. The film, written and directed by Ira Sachs, tells the story of two men (Erik and Paul), and their turbulent nine-year relationship. Nine years full of affairs, drug addiction, and the inability to face their own personal problems. Yet none of these issues are fully, honestly, or even realistically explored — in part due to a screenplay that feels like a first draft, and also due to the surprisingly terrible acting from the entire cast.  This is especially problematic when it comes to the character of Erik. He is the center of the screenplay. The audience sees the story through his eyes. The camera focuses on Erik’s reactions to express the turmoil and tragedy of it all. Therefore Erik’s flat performance  (courtesy of Thurn Lindhart) hurts the film tremendously.  The movie’s biggest flaw is its inability to connect with its audience. One does not believe, let alone care about Erik, Paul, or their supposed heartbreaking relationship. Keep the Lights On desperately wants to make one feel the downfalls and triumphs of these two men, but it ends up being somewhat of a raw shell with a hollow center.

Wish You Were Here

An impressive directorial debut from Kieran Darcy Smith, Wish You Were Here is an interesting drama thriller hybrid that fulfills the drama aspect, but falls short in terms of being a rewarding thriller.  Told in a fragmentary non-chronological order, married couple Alice and Dave (the excellent Joel Edgerton) go on vacation with Alice’s sister Steph and her new boyfriend Jeremy.  After a blurry crazy night of partying and drugs Jeremy goes missing without a trace. Post vacation life is anything but easy for the three who must continue on with their daily lives.  Slowly but surely, piece-by-piece, the truth of what happened that night rears its ugly head and the characters are not as innocent as they would like each other to believe. Wish You Were Here demonstrates how one night, one decision can forever alter our lives and the lives of those we love. With an especially harrowing conclusion of the second act the film is constantly compelling. Still with all this suspense and mystery the big reveal feels a bit anti-climatic. The build up through out the entire movie deserves a more satisfying conclusion than the one that is given. The character of Steph is also strangely absent in the later half; she is used for a plot twist early on and then forgotten. What is frustrating is that the relationship dynamics between the three leads are so well developed, if only the story had been just as strong.

Image Sources:

http://keepthelightsonfilm.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/KEEP_THE_LIGHTS_ON_Thure_Lindhardt_Zachary_Booth_byJean-Christophe-Husson.jpg

http://recordpreserveshare.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/wishyouwerehere.jpg?w=490&h=329

Smashed

From the synopsis Smashed sounded like an intense gritty drama: A married couple whose relationship is based around getting wasted is put to the test once the wife decides to attend AA meetings and attempt sobriety. However director/co writer James Ponsoldt takes the film in a different direction than most in the substance abuse genre. Smashed is a full on dramedy that focus’s not only on the brokenness of the characters, but their humorous quirks as well. The best aspect of the film is certainly the performances, especially Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the main protagonist, Kate. Winstead brings not only heart and realism to the movie, but she also bursts with comedic energy. Yet Smashed is a dramedy that is much better in the moment than it is in retrospect. At times it is moving, at others it is a bit too obvious lacking subtlety and subtext. Still due to the actors in both large and small roles make the film an entertaining indie.

L

With an approximate number of walk out at twenty-five-people Babis Makridis (writer of Dogtooth) L is certainly one of the most divisive films at Sundance this year (along with Tim and Eric). It’s bizarre. It’s creative. It’s intellectually engaging. It’s difficult. It’s aesthetically astounding. And it’s brilliant. It is hard for one to even describe the plot of this absurdist piece of cinema. It tells both the universal but also personal story of Man (that’s his name) struggling to find answers in a world where nothing is certain.  Man lives in his car alone. Once and awhile his ex-wife drops off the kids and he takes them driving around the city. He seems content with this. His career is one of driving to pick up honey for a rich man and he is very good at it. Still he continuously has reoccurring nightmares involving his best friend who lived in the honey fields as a bear only to be shot by a hunter. All this is only the tip of iceberg. Needless to say Samuel Beckett would be proud. In L’s short eighty minute running time it manages to explore the mysterious truth of our existence: that humans will always be searching for truth and answers. We change, our beliefs change, our friends will react differently to our changes, and life’s questions will never fully be answered. Babis Makridis explores this and more in a way that is truly unique, never boring, and constantly challenging.

Image Sources:

http://cdn05.film.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Smashed_MaryElizabethWinstead_AaronPaul_byOanaMarian.jpg

http://www.atthecinema.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/L.jpg

Marina Abramovic The Artist is Preset

One form of art most often dismissed by the public is the seemingly always controversial and confrontational performance art. This enlightening and thought-provoking documentary creates a portrait of a woman who many critics call the queen of performance art: Marina Abramovic. Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present is carefully constructed film that chronicles both her artistic/personal past and the retrospective exhibition at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, which presents her with another challenging performance piece. This results into a great exploration into the rhyme and reason (yes there is a purpose) of Abramovic’s works therefore broadening ones own understanding of how to approach and intelligently engage with controversial works. The best aspect of the documentary though is how it manages to demonstrate the ability of her performance art to strip away exterior falsities and forces. Abramovic’s galleries reveal humanities deep desires for connection and honesty transforming her work and this excellent documentary into a very spiritual piece of art.

Teddy Bear

Channeling Daren Arronofsky’s The Wrestler filmmaker Mads Matthiesen tells the story of a body builder, named Dennis, with some serious social issues, especially when it comes to his relationships with the opposite sex. In part due to his controlling mother who continues to treat him a though he was still ten years old(he still lives at home). Attempting to discover not only himself but, on a subconscious level,  break free of his mothers psychological grasp he travels to Thailand. The rest of the film chronicles Dennis’s struggle to find love with woman and find a balance in his uneven relationship with his Mother. Teddy Bear is a very touching and well-acted movie about where humans will look for love.  Yet for some reason it never becomes something truly powerful or memorable. It is a very good film with no distinctive flaws and a tender heart, but it never fully reaches greatness. Something is missing.

Image Sources:

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2687/4421751197_e876cce77b_z.jpg

http://www.sundance.org/images/filmguide/2012/120125-1.jpg

I am twenty-five years of age and one-and-a-half years out of college. I’m basically an old man now. If I had a lawn, I’d be telling kids to get off it. So maybe it’s just that I’m getting old and cranky but my experiences going out to the theater have steadily gotten worse and worse to the point that I’ve seriously considered never setting foot in a theater again. It’s not that tickets and snacks are overpriced. It’s not that all movies are crap now. It’s nothing corporate. It’s very personal.

Like a church, I view the movie theater as a sacred place. You pay your $10-$11 (or tithe), sit in your favorite seat (or pew), and pay attention to the screen (or preacher) for the duration of the movie (or sermon). Typically during a church service, unless they’re complete douchebags, people will,
A) Show up before the sermon begins
B) Not converse during the sermon
C) Leave their kids elsewhere or at least keep them under control
D) Not leave trash strewn everywhere
E) Keep their cell phones on silent and in their pocket
You know, common courtesy. But for some reason, all of this gets thrown right out the window at the movie theater. I have to deal with at least one of these every single time I go to the theater. It’s the people who do these things that make me hate going to the theater.

Walking in Late
Apart from being incredibly distracting when a person is trying to find a seat in the dark (why they can’t just sit in the nearest aisle seat rather than insisting on stepping over everybody to get to the middle is beyond me), I don’t understand how you walk into a movie 10 minutes late and then expect to enjoy the rest of the film. This may just be a personal thing but I cannot watch a movie if I’ve missed out on the beginning. My dad is one of those people who flips the TV over to a movie or show that’s already well underway and continues to watch it! It bugs the hell out of me. It would be like starting a book 30 pages in. You aren’t getting the story the way the filmmaker or author intended!

Talking During the Movie
“Hey, trio of girls behind me! The theater may have a state-of-the-art sound system blaring away but I can still hear your yammering. Why of all places would you come to a theater to gossip about Ginny’s latest boyfriend and how she’s making a horrible life choice dating him. There is way better drama happening on screen! Look! The guy is trying to land his burning spacecraft on an inhospitable planet while being chased by bounty hunters! How can you talk about trite idiocies at a time like this? Shut the hell up! Thank you!”

Or that’s what I would say if I wasn’t such a nice guy.

Bringing the Kids
A matinee showing of a PG rated movie aimed at kids, fine, bring the kids. Whatever. But parents who bring their preteens to anything PG-13 and over or after 7pm are just plain inconsiderate assholes. They either don’t give a crap what their kids are watching or couldn’t find a babysitter. Whatever the case is, they thought it was just fine to make you share in their suffering and misery instead of being responsible adults and staying home with their premature, out-of-control progeny. I’d never lay a hand on a child but if that kid keeps kicking the back of my chair, daddy’s gonna get a knuckle sandwich.

Leaving Trash
Why is it that theaters seem to be the only acceptable place to leave your trash strewn everywhere? Seems there’s always at least one giant tub of popcorn spilled everywhere and ground into the carpet or a barrel of soda cascading like a system of waterfalls down to the front row ending in a fizzy, sticky lake. And they almost always never mention it, preferring to leave it as some kind of horrible surprise for the usher to deal with in the 15 minutes they have before they have to let the next screening in. Beyond these grave offences, no matter how much crap someone walked in with, they always leave empty handed. There are trashcans just outside of every single screen for your convenience. Are people seriously so lazy that they can’t be bothered to carry their skittles wrapper 50 feet to the trash?

Using the Cell Phone
To me, this is an offense punishable by death. Slow, painful death. What could possibly be so important that you can’t turn off your phone for two hours? Is a nuclear power plant going to meltdown? Does the President need your advice on how to deal with North Korea? Is your boyfriend going to assume you’ve died and jump into bed with your best friend if you don’t reply to his text within 30 seconds? I guarantee that life will carry on just fine without you. This problem is compounded by the fact that in a dark theater, a cell phone screen shines like a stadium floodlight in a cave and your eyes, like a moth, are uncontrollably drawn to the pinpoint of glaring white light in the darkness.

On top of all the people around you being inconsiderate assholes, theater projectionists are either lazy or overworked and don’t or can’t make sure that the projection is running correctly, at proper brightness, centered, and in focus. All they have to do now is push a button and the movie starts. Glance out the little window once to make sure the previews are playing and it’s on to the next one. There was one theater in particular I used to go to (never again) where the projection was consistently and blatantly horrible no matter how many times I pointed it out to the management.

And yet, I still go to the theater.Why, when I hate so much, do I continue to attend?

Because the theater is still the optimal way to see a film. There are two reasons for this.

First, because of the community. “What!?” you must be saying. “You just spent seven paragraphs explaining (quite eloquently, good sir) that you hate everybody!” you add. That’s only partly true. I do hate people who are rude and inconsiderate to the people around them and I do write quite eloquently. But I don’t hate everybody and every little noise they make. No, I don’t want a silent theater full of silent robots passively watching the movie. What I love, is when a room full of people of different ages, lifestyles, creeds, and experiences, are completely in sync with each other. When the entire auditorium laughs at the same joke or gasp as one when the killer reveals himself or applaud together when the hero makes the game-winning shot. There’s no other word for it but magic. This is what the theater experience is all about. Bringing people together.

Second, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a 15 foot high screen with a premium surround sound system and 4k projector. Some films I have no trouble waiting for the home release but then there are other films are made to be seen as big and as loud as possible and it would be a disservice to the film to see it any other way. I’ve seen 2001: A Space Odyssey numerous times but never projected on a theater screen and I feel like, until that happens, I haven’t really seen the film. Not the way Kubrick intended.

Additionally, fortunately, there are still theaters and theater owners that do care about the movie-going experience and I try to give those places all my business. In Hollywood, The Arclight is about as close to perfection as you can get. They may charge more than the average but to me, it’s worth it. And I don’t always have to pay a premium for that perfect screening. There are smaller theaters like The New Beverly and The Aero that are made for and run by film lovers like myself who value quality screenings and generally charge between $8-$10 for a double feature. They may not be as prevalent or as convenient as your local cineplex, but they actually care. They care about the movies, about the community, and about you. And that melts this cynical, bitter, theater-goer’s heart and keeps me going back to the movies.

IT’S ATTACK OF THE CINEMA ESOTERICA OBSCURA!!!!

But seriously, this list took a long time and you should check it out and also tell me what I’m missing. This is a list of some of the weirdest movies I’ve seen, so it is not the end all of weird movie lists. I’m always on the look out for strange and always adding to the list. Enjoy.

My blessings.

from Jonathan Burrello

In her classic memoir Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Anne Dillard sees things with fresh eyes and child like wonder. An afternoon relaxing under a sycamore tree provides her with profound thoughts on mortality, time, the past, and God. Instead of ignoring the nature that is all around her she decides to really “see” it for the first time. There in which she finds beauty and peace.

“To really know what an apple is, to be interested in it, to understand it, that is really seeing it,” says a poetry teacher to small class at a community center in Lee Chang-Dong’s moving film Poetry. The teacher encourages the grown adult pupils to see life for the first time; there they will find inspiration for their poems. One particular student is a sixty-six year old woman, Mija, who has never written a poem. She barely makes it into the class because she forgets to sign up. However this class and this teacher’s recommendation to see unbeknownst to her might be her saving grace.

In the past two hundred years this is exactly what poets have done. As a coping mechanism to life’s brutality’s they look deeper at life to fully understand its many complexities. The great British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson did this on numerous instances throughout his life. In his poem The Lady of Shallot Tennyson takes a 15^th century tale and through poetry re works it to comment on topical societal issues such as the struggle for a woman to find freedom and equality amongst male counter parts. In an even more personal poem Tennyson sees the world differently than he ever had before.  In Memoriam A.H.H. was a reaction to a death of a close friend that caused him to question the existence of God and the randomness of existence. Through the art of poetry he is able to work through his struggle and understand life in a way previously unattainable. He begins in a state of despair and slowly by the end poem he arrives at some sense of peace; his vision is renewed.

Line 55

“I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

And gather dust and chaff and call

To what I feel is the Lord of all,

An faintly trust the larger hope.”

Compare that with the last stanza of the poem:

“With faith that comes of self control,

The truths that never can be proved

Until we close with all we loved,

And all we flow from, soul in soul”

T.S. Elliot with his poem The Wasteland is able to cope with the loss of WWI by confronting it and fully realizing the newly devastated world. Emily Dickenson often offered readers new insights into death and how humanity perceives or approaches it. Even a more modern-day poet such as Madeline L’Engle seeks to truly understand the characters of the Bible with her use of poetry in her collection A Cry Like a Bell.

Some offer a new way of seeing that is positive, but others are quite depressing. Both are ultimately beautiful for they open up a world one would never understand other wise.

Poetry is all Mija has. She strives to gain inspiration from looking at an apple, at a tree struggling to see with fresh eyes. When first introduced she seems like a well off elderly woman, yet as the film progresses it is revealed that Mija is anything but. She is on government welfare, she lives in a female oppressed male dominated society, doctors tell her she has Alzheimer’s, and she shockingly finds out that her fifteen-year old grandson participated in multiple gang rapes causing the girl to eventually commit suicide.  The situations get worse and worse with Mija becoming more and more desperate to do anything it takes to resolve the overwhelming tribulations.  Make no mistake Poetry is a dark grueling film that runs in the vein of Lars Von Trier. At two hours and twenty minutes it certainly isn’t an easy ride, but Yung Jun-Hee masterful performance as Mija draws one in making it near impossible for the viewer to remain detached during the films running time.

Yet like In Memoriam and The Wasteland writer/director Lee Chan-Dong does not allow pessimism to win the day. He offers a solution. That solution is finding that new way of seeing. While first and foremost an art form poetry can be a therapeutic tool as well. Poetry can break through the walls of suffocating external realities and discover a wealth compassion, beauty, and truth in places one never cared to look. That is what Poetry in all its complexities and darkness is about. It is an artist utilizing one powerful art form (cinema) to reveal the saving power of another one (poetry).

Sources:

Some movies are just too big for a mere 90 minutes.

“I saw Gone With the Wind (1939), Ben Hur (1959), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003) so I know epic.”

First of all, thank you for not referencing Gladiator (2000). I agree. Spartacus (1960) is the far superior film. Next, while it is always something to feel well-versed in a genre one can always become well-versedier. Most people would be familiar with Cecil B. DeMille (The Ten Commandments) and David Lean (Doctor Zhivago) and their epics are nothing to sneeze at, but how many Americans are familiar with František Vláčil?

There are so many fantastic foreign epics that it would be impossible to name them all. The silent era saw many immortal epic classics born like Abel Gance’s frenetic and hypersymbolic Napoleon (1927) and Fritz Lang had Metropolis (1927) and Die Nibelungen: Siegried and Kriemhild’s Revenge (1924). If you think silent films are boring and slow you have not seen the opening snowball fight in Napoleon. Similar to Napoleon—in that it was meant to be multiple films but was never truly finished (but still a hearty 330 minutes)—Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin) made two installments of what would have been a trilogy—had Stalin not noticed the political commentary—with Ivan the Terrible (1944 and 1958). For more contemporary political epics you must check out Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Iron (1981). All of these films are directed by brilliant auteurs and come highly recommended if you can find them…but there are still hundreds more, but the subject of today’s article is, quite arbitrarily, four foreign epics from the 1960s you might have missed.

The 1950s and 1960s indeed saw many grand and sweeping epics (How the West Was Won, El Cid, and so on). The onslaught of Hollywood epics is indeed impressive but folks in other countries were doing things just as big and sometimes quite different. Let us start off with a familiar name. Akira Kurosawa is renown as one of the world’s great directors, and for good reason. The man responsible for such iconic films as Rashômon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), Kagemusha (1980), and Ran (1985) was no stranger to the monstrous period epic, but for some odd reason Kurosawa’s 185 minute long epic about a 19th century country doctor and his irascible mentor (played by Kurosawa favorite, Toshiro Mifune) gets missed by a lot of American audiences. Red Beard (1965) sounds like it should be a pirate movie, not an intimate drama about students of Japanese medicine. There is one scene of pretty solid action (Mifune goes to town on some goons in a brothel) but this is more a quiet film with much historical detail, subtlety, ideological conflicts, and character drama. In addition to Mifune, Kyōko Kagawa (Tokyo Story) also gives a fantastic performance as a deranged woman patient called “The Mantis.” Reflecting back on it I must say it is indeed a shame more people have not seen this amazing movie.

Rather than expound too much on these great epics I will keep my opinions brief and just tell you to see them for yourself. Red Beard is a great movie that more people need to see in the west. Another too often missed Kurosawa epic is his Russian film Dersu Uzala (1975) which just might be one of my personal favorites of his.

Also in 1965 was Wojciech Has’s (The Hour-Glass Sanatorium) epic Polish masterpiece The Saragossa Manuscript. This is a fascinating one for many reasons. It has your standard elaborate costumes, long run-time (182 minutes), and shifting 18th century scenery, but it has a witty and surreal attitude that I find incredibly appealing. It’s a squirrelly and unpredictable film with stories within stories within stories ad infinitum. It’s beautifully shot and actually pretty funny…in a subversive sly sort of way. Featuring satire, magic, horror, drama, comedy, and surrealism, The Saragossa Manuscript is an unforgettable movie experience. In many ways it might as well be a time-travel movie or an anthology picture. If my endorsement isn’t enough here’s a few other people who loved it: Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather), Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver), Jerry Garcia (of The Grateful Dead), and Luis Buñuel (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie). You have never seen a movie like this one. Enough talk. Go watch it. It is extremely awesome.

Here’s another more familiar name you ought to know. Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky (Ivan’s Childhood, Solaris, Stalker, The Sacrifice) is famous for being very slow, meticulous, lugubrious, and confoundingly enigmatic, but always with great beauty in his films. Andrei Rublev (1966) is no exception and clocking in at around 205 minutes, it will try the patience of many. Many, however, shall be rewarded. In general it is the story of a famous 15th century Russian iconographer, but it is far more bizarre than that. Events happen and Andrei Rublev is not always present nor is he consistently the center of attention. It is more a bottling of the time period. There are amazing and horrific battles, acts of whimsy and bravery, and (as always) gorgeous cinematography. Tarkovsky manages to be both intimate and distant in this grand spectacle. While Andrei Rublev might not be the place to start with Tarkovsky it is definitely one that should not be missed. His work is cinematic poetry of the highest order.

Lastly comes a film I only recently stumbled upon. It is František Vláčil’s Marketa Lazarová (1967) and what a find it was. Apparently the Czechs have known about it all along, even going so far as to label it the greatest Czech film of all time. Who knew? From the opening sequence of wolves speckling a frigid snowscape like sinister chess pieces, and the snow fight with the beggars and the men on horseback, I was hooked. Although I found the film a little difficult to follow at times there is no denying how much I truly was enamored by it. Set in the Middle Ages it flows in a series of almost unrelated chapters. Characters randomly appear amidst other characters’ narratives in the background and everything seems to be somewhat interlocked. It’s beautiful, tragic, haunting, and amazing. Most synopses seem to minimize the plot to “feudal lord’s daughter kidnapped by robbers but she falls in love with one of them,” but there really is a lot more at work here. Religion, class, and government all play a part in this seemingly lawless world. It is a dense film (162 minutes) but one that I think most people will have a hard time denying how great it is.

Still think you know epic? Go find some more then. I love film because it always strikes me as a sort of bottomless well…as with all the arts. You pull back the dusty curtain and keep discovering more sumptuous treasures. There is no end in sight to the vast amounts of films I have not heard of yet. One of my wishes for folks who peruse this site is that they see a name or a title they have not encountered before and they become inspired to dig and discover more and more in this magical and ever-changing medium. God speed.