Some Came Running

The Cinematic Word

The estimable MovieMan0283 of the blog The Dancing Image tags me with a meme, or whatever it is they call it, and honestly, I don't mind at all, as the topic is both dear to my heart and, to be honest, an easy one for me. The request is to name the ten movie books that had the biggest impact on me. I've already spoken at length, here and elsewhere, about a bunch of them, and I'll be dipping into those past thoughts as I go along. Of course at the end I'll be tagging five other bloggers, for their sins—kidding! I hope my picks will enjoy the exercise as much as I intend to.(UPDATE: This turns out not to be the case, as will be explained below.) So, here goes.

The first film book I ever read. Just look at that cover, will you? What ten-year-old, film-buff tendencies or no, wouldn't be excited by that image—an image Clarens pooh-poohs in the book itself, incidentally.

In an interview with Aaron Aradillas, I said this about the book: "I stole my school friend Allen Siegel's copy back in 1969 or so, when I was ten. I devoured the book and was obsessed with the idea of seeing, if not every film that was discussed in the book, then at least every film there was a still from in the book...Clarens stll trikes me as an exemplary critic—informative, clear-eyed, authoritative in his judgments but never ostentatious in his pronouncements of them, possessed of an enormous erudition that he wears quite lightly. J. Hoberman is absolutely right, in the introduction he wrote for the 1997 Da Capo edition of the book, to call it "a beginner's history of the movies.' A single sentence could set you off on the journey of a lifetime, e.g., 'Obviously Roger Corman is no Ingmar Bergman, nor is he Luis Buñuel, both of whom he openly admires.' Who's this Bergman, who's this Buñuel, and why does Corman admire them, my [young] self asked. Clarens' passages on Lang and Dreyer were also fascinating, exhilarating. Years, in some cases decades, would pass before I would be able to see Vampyr or Day of Wrath or Lang's Dr. Mabuse films. But Clarens' book places them at the forefront of my cinematic consciousness."

The most unusual film book...ever?

The "heavenly tribunal" meets the operating room; A Matter of Life and Death, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946

For quite a few of the people who revere it, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Matter of Life And Death (1946) is a beautiful, moving, and funny fantasy  film about a young British airman in love with an American, who, under the earthly pretext of a brain illness, is having his life put on trial by a heavenly tribunal. For Diane Broadbent Friedman, a nurse practitioner with a focus on neurological disorders, the film is pretty much the inverse of that. "The film is a complex neurological study of a psychologically normal man who believes that a heavenly tribunal has sentenced him to death."

Of course the "rational" explanation for the seemingly fantastic events in AMOLAD has always been available to the lay viewer. But Ms. Friedman's book, A Matter of Life and Death: The Brain Revealed by the Mind of Michael Powell puts this forward with a level of detail heretofore unseen in Powell scholarship. Early in the book Friedman recalls finding herself entranced by a television screening of AMOLAD she had happened upon. "I was shocked because I thought I recognized extensive, detailed neurological information within the film." Researching Powell, and the Powell-Pressburger partnership known as The Archers, Friedman discovered Powell's obsessive attention to detail, which he brought to every project. In the beginning part of her book Friedman brings the reader up to date on how far neurological science had gone by the time Powell and Pressburger conceived and began working on AMOLAD, and extrapolates just which cases and readings Powell brought to bear on the case of Peter Carter, the hero of the film. 

Writing in plain, clear prose, Friedman lays out the science in a patient, cogent fashion, and takes us step by step through the film, revealing how beautifully, and subtly, the film uses that science. The neurological knowledge Powell accumulated is shown to inform every aspect of the film. But as lovers of the picture know, AMOLAD is never a film that gets bogged down in its own bona fides, or bogs the viewer down in them. That's one reason why Friedman's analysis, rather than spoiling the magic of a truly magical film, in fact enhances it. (Peripherally, the book also demonstrates why the title Stairway to Heaven, imposed by a U.S. distributor, was so vehemently disdained by The Archers.)

Self-published via the firm Author House, Friedman's book isn't just an absolute must for any Archers fan. I believe it should prove illuminating for science wonks who insist that popular entertainments always get the technical stuff wrong—here's an exception that may prove the rule. I got my copy via Amazon, here. 

Relinquishing Roth: "Elegy" and the prerogatives of literary adaptation

I saw Isabel Coixet's Elegy, a Nicholas-Meyer-scripted adaptation of Philip Roth's short novel The Dying Animal, several months ago, and was more than a little impressed with it in spite of the fact that, while in many ways faithful to its source, it wasn't particularly Rothian. But the film, which opens in limited release this Friday, was nevertheless frank, funny, moving, and possessed a consistent but non-ostentatious intelligence that's extremely refreshing given our current cinematic situation. Both Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz gave performances that could creditably be called "brave," and I say that as someone who generally believes that characterization never truly applies.

But back to the Roth factor. In his review of the film today, New York magazine critic David Edelstein says that "the film is so far is spirit from its source...that I'm tempted to say we should abandon altogether the idea of adapting Roth." I can't say he's entirely off base here. In fact the paucity of Roth film adaptations—only four of his more than twenty novels, being Goodbye Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint, The Human Stain, and The Dying Animal, have made it to the big screen—testifies to the difficulty his work presents in this area. I'd say of those four Elegy is the best film in a walk. Goodbye Columbus is not without charm, but that's pretty much it; Ernest Lehman's attempt at Portnoy's Complaint rightly ranks as one of film's most ridiculous disasters; and The Human Stain has too much of an air of the Distinguished Film about it, not that Elegy is entirely immune from that peculiar taint either.If Elegy has any value at all, it's because Coixet does depart from Roth's spirit. That is, she's taken a Roth text and made an Isabel Coixet film out of it. Roth is a scrupulous chronicler of that most unscrupulous of states, desire; he discomfits us with his pinpoint portrayals of the urges and the agonies that attend it. Coixet, as shown in works such as My Life Without Me and The Secret Life of Words, is scrupulous too, but she's more of an overt humanist than Roth. She's hardly a sentimentalist, but she's of a gentler sensibility, and she tries to see the point of view of all her characters in a way that Roth, who's all about the subjectivity of his protagonists, doesn't necessarily feel obliged to.

In his review, Edelstein muses, "I'd like to see Charlie Kaufman take a stab" at Roth, and I can see his point there, too—Kaufman's a master of the brutal but sometimes self-deluding obsessive examination of self (I doubt that if Portnoy's Complaint had not existed, Kaufman would not have, either), with a gift for mordant/side-splitting humor to match. But this got me woolgathering about who might be the ideal cinematic channeler of Roth. Who, possibly, could tackle his most careeningly scabrous vision, 1995's Sabbath's Theater? No one, by which I mean, no one filmmaker. It would require some unholy hybrid of Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, John Cassavettes, and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

A profile of Kingsley, also in the current New York points up another issue. According to Coixet, Roth requested that one of the central episodes of the book—the episode of "the bite," wherein protagonist David Kepesh treats erotic fixation Consuela like a blow-up doll, and she instinctively uses her teeth on him—"to be very graphic in the film." Coixet recalls saying to Roth, "Look, I’m from Barcelona—I have no problem with blow jobs—but people don’t want to see Penélope biting his penis!" Roth eventually demured. Without necessarily intending to, Coixet brings up a rather more crucial problem apropos book-to-film adaptations: movie stars. Reading the sequence in the book, one is free to imagine Kepesh and Consuela as one will. The force of this scene registers via your own subjectivity, maybe. But in film, what you're seeing is Penelope biting Ben's penis, just as the internet was flooded, several months ago, with shots of Penelope's breasts in this movie. That's a big part of what compromises Robert Benton's, yes, scrupulous treatment of Roth's The Human Stain—you never actually see the characters, no matter how hard the actors try. Rather, you see movie stars Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman trying really hard. Kingsely and Cruz don't have to strain so much, as they're playing characters not quite so far removed from our images of them than what Hopkins and Kidman were going for. By keeping the actions of Kingsley and Cruz's characters reasonably within the boundaries of "good" taste, Coixet relinquishes Roth's unsparing vision, but buys a level of audience acceptance.

Is that a cop-out? Maybe so. Elegy does in fact forsake Roth's rawness from the title change on down. But, especially given the anti-adult bent of so many films these days, it provides ample enough rewards in exchange for it.

Department of I-guess-it-all-depends-on-who-you-talk-to

"Here come the warm ICBMs," Green Cine Daily's David Hudson drolly notes, anticipating the howls of outrage he believes will greet Stephanie Zacharek's review of Richard Brody's Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard in today's New York Times Book Review, in which, among other things, she responds to Brody's insistence that Godard's later work is deserving of critical reevaluation with an insistence that it is, well, not. So okay then.

Stephanie is a friend, and an admired colleague, and we know each other's aesthetic predilections pretty well, so I doubt she'll be surprised to learn that I take exceptional exception to many if not most of her points. But I'd rather debate her in person than harangue her from this perch. I will cite one bit from her review that I thought kind of funny, not in and of itself, but, well, you'll see. Recounting Brody's detailing of Godard's "rudeness" on various film sets, she invokes Jacques Rivette, saying his "filmmaking methods are better examples of the collaborative ideal of the '60s and early '70s. To make his 12-hour-plus epic 'Out 1,' Rivette gave his large cast of actors guidelines for creating their characters, and they wrote most of the movie's dialogue themselves."
That is true, as far as any of us who weren't there can tell. Still, when Kent Jones interviewed Out 1 actor Jean Pierre Leaud (pictured here in a scene from the film) in 1999, Leaud summed up his experience with Rivette thusly: "It was a very exciting adventure for a young man, but I wouldn't want to repeat it. I guess that the vampiric, sadistic methods that Rivette used to make that film were a part of the moment."

So, yes, sometimes it all depends on who you talk to. And also, with artists as with politicians, there are always pitfalls to judging them according to which one you'd prefer to have a beer with, or think you'd prefer to have a beer with.

Hmm. Inputting that just made me flash on these lines from The Dictators' immortal "Two Tub Man," perhaps the greatest approximate-rhyme heroic couplet ever written, to wit: "I'm just a clown walkin' down the street!/I think, Lou Reed is a CREEP!"

And it's true—Lou Reed IS a creep. But still...

"Exile," cunning, no silence

The above shot is from the bustling scene at Manhattan's KGB complex (it's an arts/reading space with an ironic Soviet nostalgia theme—no, Martin Amis would not approve, but it's still a happening joint) in the aftermath of a celebration of/reading from Exile Cinema: Filmmakers At Work Beyond Hollywood, a collection of film writings edited by Michael Atkinson, that, Atkinson says, has been awaiting publication for three years. Among the luminaries in the audience were such thoroughly engaged and engaging films writers as Aaron Hillis, Karina Longworth, Craig Keller, Kevin Lee, Allison Willmore, and David Fear; among the luminaries reading their contributions to the book were Ed Halter, the particularly delightful Stuart Klawans (whose essay is a Talmudically-informed consideration of Chantal Akerman) , and Atkinson himself, who read from both his introduction and from filmmaker Guy Maddin's appreciation of Jose Mojica Marins.

Yes, this is the same Michael Atkinson with whom I picked a fight just a couple of days ago. How could it not be? As I've said before, I think he's a provocative and often astute critic, and I think the book's a worthy project (and most of the readings I heard suggest I'm going to enjoy the whole thing almost unreservedly). But I'll admit that another reason I turned up was in the hope of unruffling some feathers. While I take passionate exception with some of the specifics of the arguments Atkinson's put out there, the fact of the matter is that we absolutely agree on certain essentials, the biggest one being on the need for an informed, literate, non-market-oriented film criticism with an engaged international perspective. Whether it comes from mainstream media outlets (which seems less and less likely) or a loose affiliation of internet-based writers, or some where/thing else. As much as the essays I heard last night, the conversations I had with the above-mentioned folk suggest to me that there's more than a little hope for that. Although I get the feeling that Atkinson is more pessimistic on this front than I am. But in any case, let me give him the last word here—this is from the introduction to Exile Cinema:

It is the critic's job, performed well or not or not at all, to embrace the visual text in question as a totality—as an expression, a creation, a consummable product, a market agent, a social symptom—but as a totality with intent. That intent is to be viewed, by people, for enjoyment, stimulation, and/or satisfaction, and so the critic is the cultural pointman, the reconnoiterer for his fellow citizens for whom a movie is an experience to be had, enjoyed, contemplated, and argued over, nothing less and often little more. Their responsibilities begin and end in the seat, in the dark, watching, with their readers.