My 2024 Watchlist Obsession!

I should revisit It's Such a Beautiful Day.

The Shôhei Imamura one, but the fact you asked has me a little interested in the Ridley Scott film as well.

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Imamura is the correct way to go

Something I must confess to before I talk about Black Rain - a close, personal friend of mine died a couple of weeks ago, and I watched Black Rain directly after the funeral yesterday. I honestly don't know if that put me in a headspace where I'd be more affected by the loss and sorrow in this movie - it was going to move me tremendously either way, because it's just that kind of film. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima had a flow-on effect - so while we're often well aware of the horror that occurred in the immediate aftermath, the pain inflicted in the years afterwards is sometimes less acknowledged. Shōhei Imamura confronts us with both in Black Rain. He doesn't hold back - as characters Yasuko (Yoshiko Tanaka), her uncle Shigematsu (Kazuo Kitamura) and aunt Shigeko (Etsuko Ichihara) move through the blasted ruins right after the bomb has been dropped, we see the charred corpses, burned survivors, and the suffering multitude in many stages of dying. We see horrors of a moment in time we can hardly imagine really happened. The film then goes on to give us a sense of what happened in the years afterward, as this family group (the three live with Shigematsu's mother) loses friends and acquaintances, before themselves becoming sick.

What struck me most about this film was how normal these people seemed to be - they survived the bomb and seemed to be getting along okay. How insidious it is to have the effects of the bombing still working away at killing you, years after the fact - without even obvious symptoms. Black Rain reminded me of Lynne Littman film Testament in the way it presented a normal community whose members are slowly, and sadly, disappearing. The deaths and sickness has a cumulative effect which makes the situation sadder and sadder as time advances, and it seems so unfair that people are still being killed years after the war has ended. While Imamura stages the bombing itself with cataclysmic spectacle and confronting horror, the years after have a gentle, easy-going slow-paced domestic aura reminiscent of a Yasujirō Ozu film. He makes sure we get to know this community well before having it's members lose a step, become more ill, then disappear. It gives us the foreknowledge that saddens us when we see members of Yasuko's family become very ill, get tumors and sport lesions on thier faces. In the meantime, their attitude to nuclear weapons and their potential further use agonizes them.

Some films are so powerful that they do the events they portray complete justice - and that is definitely true of Shōhei Imamura's Black Rain. (The black rain referred to is the fallout that fell in raindrops - Yasuko is one of those who experienced it.) Poor Yasuko - her family tries to hide the fact she came into contact with that black rain, for the conclusions most would draw will prevent her from ever being married. The sadness at the core of this story is one of the most touching I've ever seen in a film. Throughout, Imamura expertly guides us along in a manner that makes this seem like a film from the time period of what it's depicting - you'd never guess this film was made in 1988, with it's soft, black and white visual glow. It retains the look of a relic - of ghosts speaking to us from a past that was decimated and wiped away. I lost myself within it. It had me completely under it's spell, despite the fact that I'd just said goodbye to an old friend myself. It resonated with me in a way where I have no doubt, however, as to it's standing as one of the great films about Hiroshima. Please let this never, ever, happen again - these weapons are so inhumane that the use of them should surely constitute a crime against humanity.

Glad to catch this one - won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – Special Mention, Technical Grand Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, along with 9 Japanese Academy Awards.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Black Rain.

I'm familiar with dementia related to parental old age - in my experience I didn't lose my mother all of the sudden when she died, I lost her gradually over the course of years as she became less physically able and more confused/less like herself. There are a few movies that look at this, one great one being Michael Haneke's Amour, which featured a husband and wife (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva) where the husband was lucid, but his once intelligent wife starts to lose mental and physical abilities. With Vortex, another controversial filmmaker in Gaspar Noé goes down a very similar road - a departure for him, without the kind of extreme content you'd be expecting in one of his films. Featuring, as the two elderly characters, are Dario Argento (in his first major role in front of the cameras) and Françoise Lebrun - interesting selections. Argento, in his 80s, I never would have recognized, but he has no difficultly at all playing his role. All of the dialogue is improvised, but guided by a screenplay. That's all straightforward, but what's not is the way the screen is divided into two windows, through which we see different perspectives - both Françoise and Dario split from each other. Sometimes these perspectives merge, or at least come into such close proximity that it looks like we're seeing a single screen.

Despite the fact that this film runs 142 minutes, it's wasn't a slog for me - but that may vary depending on who's watching. I've always been interested in how people with dementia operate - there are the mistakes they make that seem on the face of things understandable, and then there are the actions they take which are completely mystifying. Why does the mind work this way? When Françoise turns the gas on in the apartment and then walks away, is it a sneaky suicide attempt, or a misguided mistake? When she rips up Dario's precious notes on the book he's writing, and then flushed them down the toilet, is she making some kind of comment on how he's neglecting her? (She throws the entire contents of a wastebasket into the toilet - while Dario is in the shower to boot, giving him a burst of red hot water when she flushes.) When she leaves the apartment and walks through the shops in town, does she know what she's doing? Relatives, including Dario and Françoise's son Stéphane (Alex Lutz) strive to understand. "You are home," he tells his frightened mother, when she keeps telling him that she wants to go home. What does she mean, in her confusion? Is she simply having trouble communicating?

The sadness in this film comes from the fact that you can clearly see these people love each other in their own way, but they struggle to work together for Françoise's benefit. Dario is a little neglectful, and has had a lover for a number of years preceding this - but he's old as well, and not up to the business of being a carer. He's often in his own world, despite holding onto Françoise with all his might. Stéphane is a wayward son who looks to be doing community service because of issues related to a drug addiction - so he is similarly incapable of offering meaningful assistance. Vortex shows how people can end up drifting into their own private worlds and become disconnected from each other. This is even the case when two people are living with each other, but doing their own thing. Seeing it this way was completely new to me - I'd never seen a film divide itself into two perspectives nearly all the way through. I cannot fault it, and feel like I glimpsed multitudes of truths during my time watching it. It doesn't want to bury you in anguish and fear, but instead explore the fading of life as something akin to waking from a dream, and slowly forgetting it. We're only human after all, and all films that acknowledge that are fine with me.

Glad to catch this one - premiered in the Cannes Premiere section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Won Best Film at the Dublin International Film Festival and Film Fest Gent, and Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Prize at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Vortex.

I’m mixing up Amour, which I’ve seen, with Vortex, which I don’t think I have. It’s in my watchlist now.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Movie experiences like watching Le Bonheur don't come along very often. Agnès Varda seems to be a bit of a magician, making me as uncomfortable as I would be watching a horror movie while watching one of the most placid, peaceful, bright, colourful and happy visual experiences I've ever had. Le Bonheur (happiness) is definitely the central theme of the film, but at the same time it presents us with an insidious wrong that you'd be hard pressed to see in any of the films that came out in the 1960s. It presents us with an absolutely idyllic family - first appearing to us in the bright, flower-filled French countryside holding hands (to the strains of Mozart.) They are a perfectly contented foursome - father François (Jean-Claude Drouot), mother Thérèse (Claire Drouot) and their two kids - a boy and a girl. François loves his wife as much as anyone could love their spouse, and they have an active love life while enjoying the pleasures of watching their kids grow. Despite this, he starts having an affair with a woman working at the post office, Émilie (Marie-France Boyer).

So, why the affair? It's not as if François lacks anything in his life. Well, he feels he has so much happiness and love to share, that he can easily have Émilie, but not love François any less - that's despite him missing events while being with her. He sees this completely from his own point of view, and the film frames all of this in a very neutral way. In fact, the idyllic presentation never stops. Le Bonheur uses colour so beautifully that it looks like a postcard in motion - it's yellow, green and blue tones come from the screen and strike your eyes as if they've never seen those colours before. Even the occasional fade or transition uses a bright colour instead of just using fading images or black, making it seem like we're blinking into the sun on a bright day. This all emphasises that feeling of happiness all the more - but does happiness really signify innocence, justice or what's right? One person's happiness can have a devastating effect on other people depending on where it's coming from, and just because you're happy does not mean you're right - in a moral sense.

This was pretty close to being a perfect movie. It's the first Agnès Varda film I've ever seen, and the way she composes her scenes is absolutely flawless. This is a moving work of art. If you love movies and cinematography, seeing the restored La Bondeur with it's vivid colour re-intensified is a wonderful experience. At first I just thought this was was going to be a perfectly placid film - and for the most part it is, but there's an event two-thirds of the way in that's absolutely disturbing, and that radiates out so that the whole experience of happiness and bright innocence you see feels extraordinarily unnerving. It all culminates with some of the most haunting, uneasy scenes I've ever seen presented in such an outwardly beatific way. Overall this was an unforgettable film experience, and I'd love to see it on the big screen. Described as "a horror movie wrapped up in sunflowers" and "one of the most terrifying films I’ve ever seen" by Jenny Chamarette, it's subversive while being completely innocuous on it's surface. One of the strongest statements I've ever seen in movie form.

Glad to catch this one - Criterion #420. The film is associated with the French New Wave and won two awards at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival, including the Jury Grand Prix.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Le Bonheur.

Woah - it's a dizzying high getting treated to such eloquent, masterful and emotionally captivating cinema all of the sudden, from a filmmaker I wasn't really aware of, but one who had a great deal to do with the French New Wave (going under the radar all the same.) As soon as the tarot cards were being dealt, and interpreted, I knew that a kind of predestination would be heralding our "heroine", pop singer Cléo (Corinne Marchand) toward a high stakes meeting with destiny. This destiny is wrapped up in the answer to a question - does Cléo have cancer? She is to find out when she hears from her doctor, and in the meantime every possible sign and omen will be interpreted by the frightened, flighty, temperamental Cléo Victoire (real name Florence.) So onwards we follow her in real time as she meets her maid, has her lover drop in, rehearses songs with musicians, goes to a cafe, meets a friend and spends some time with a solider called Antoine (Antoine Bourseiller). The film has crescendos, and a rhythm which sees rises and falls in emotional intensity, and is almost documentary-like in the way we simply follow our main character around - a real cinéma vérité classic which mixes in melodrama, music, art and of course, most importantly, fate.

Who is Cléo really? Throughout the film we see her change appearance over and over again, reveal her real name, be seen distorted in various mirrors and reflections and have wildly fluctuating moods. It almost seems like she's lost herself because of her profession, and can't find the real person anymore - so ultimately, when trying to find herself, only sees portents of doom. Agnès Varda reflects this beautifully with framing and cinematography existing at an absurdly high level of perfection and artistic expression. The camera seems light as a feather as it whips around the tempest surrounding Cléo and her life. Corinne Marchand is primarily famous for playing this role - and I can't quite figure why she wasn't a bigger name, or had a bigger career than she ended up having (she's still alive, at 92, and was last in La Melodie in 2017, so she never went away!) She's fantastic in this. As a bonus we get to see French New Wave figures Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, Eddie Constantine, and Jean-Claude Brialy in a silent 'film within a film' which Cléo watches (and which Agnès Varda directed) with friend Dorothée (Dorothée Blanck) - meeting her as she poses for sculptors. We take a really refreshing dive into French art, cinema and music in Cléo from 5 to 7.

I don't think Cléo is the kind of character who would be at peace even at the best of times. With a possible cancer diagnosis on the way, and with a constant drumbeat of bad omens unfolding in front of her eyes, the swinging pendulum has become erratic - it's up to the people she comes into contact with to try and reach her. To help her, and restore her if they can. In the meantime, 1960s Paris seems to be a place frothing with life and energy - almost unfair in Cléo's eyes. What a beautiful way to express all of this Cléo from 5 to 7 is. The music is stirring when it needs to be, the black and white photography unforgettable, and Agnès Varda's real-time narrative somehow both grounded yet transcendental. I actually haven't spent much time familiarizing myself with the French New Wave - almost as if I've been preparing myself over the years to immerse myself amongst these feted filmmakers. As far as that goes, I'm glad I've started with a director that's probably not mentioned enough. I've certainly fallen in love with her great films - and although it's a strange note to end on, I have to mention the editing in this as well, which rises to the absurdly high level everything else is at. Simply because I forgot to, in my review of Le Bonheur and this. I've been dazzled and mesmerized by the beauty, and enchanted by this French cinematic poetry.

Glad to catch this one - Criterion #73 and in Steven Jay Schneider's 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Ranked #14 in the 2022 Sight & Sound Critics Poll of the greatest movies of all time. Competed at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Le Bonheur.

You should check out her documentaries as well. They're also very good/great.

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IMDb
Letterboxd

Love Cleo From 5 to 7.

You can look at the 1911 incarnation of Dante's Inferno in a number of different lights. For one thing, it heralds a number of firsts at present - for example, it's the first ever Italian feature-length film, and the earliest surviving feature-length film. It could be viewed as history's first horror film. It also utilizes an extensive number of special effects - as if being such an early example of long-form cinema wasn't enough by itself. It struck me that these effects were really well implemented, and that there were no end of different locations and complex sets built for the production. For such an early year, it's a staggering achievement in filmmaking. Now, apparently the first ever feature-length film (which no longer survives in it's entirety) is Australian 1906 movie The Story of the Kelly Gang (60 minutes long), followed by the 1909 American Les Misérables - which consists of four short films strung together. They are the only two which predate Dante's Inferno - and when you watch this movie you are struck by the fact that you're watching film history unfold. It makes the fact that it's of such epic scope, and not simple and straightforward, all the more incredible.

The film tells the story of the first canticle of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Inferno. In it Dante (Salvatore Papa) is trying to ascend to heaven when he's met by three beasts representing avarice, pride and lust. He's also met by the poet Virgilio (Arturo Pirovano), who wards the beasts off and guides Dante through Limbo and then the Nine Circles of Hell, where sinners are punished and tortured in various ways depending on how they erred during their life. There are people weighed down with lead, being boiled in tar, frozen from the waist down in ice and eating each other, pushing along sacks of gold for all eternity, turned into trees and tortured by harpies, entombed alive while at the same time submitted to being burned, blowing around in a cyclonic wind, living in a river of filth and other such treatment from demons and Satan himself. It's still kind of awful to contemplate as each scene unfolds, and I can completely see why it was a useful tool to keep the God-fearing on a righteous path. I've always struggled with the concept of being tortured for all eternity. Eternity. So that means in a trillion times a trillion times a trillion years, you've hardly begun? How about a one with a trillion trillion zeros after it - that number of years, you're still being tortured, with no sight of it ending? Eternity as a concept unsettles me.

Watching Dante's Inferno is a dream-like experience just because of it's ancient appearance, theatrical exaggerated performances, and weird concepts brought to life in a very literal interpretation of Inferno. I was super impressed by special effects which made it possible for Salvatore Papa and Arturo Pirovano to seem like they were amongst giants, for people to walk around with their severed heads, for people and demons to fly or be blown by powerful winds, for angels to appear from nowhere, demons disappear and various modes of fire, different kinds of beasts and monsters and varying other smoke & mirror tricks to be performed. Overall an eerie peek at mankind haunted by divine justice, only undone a little by how funny I thought it that Dante went around scolding famous miscreants for their bad deeds when they were already being tortured in hell. It felt like a Red Cross inspector telling a concentration camp victim to shape up. There was something awfully spooky about Satan also, chewing on Brutus, Cassius and Judas Iscariot - the winged giant in a dark corner like a mammoth brooding spider. Imagery you'll never forget - with perhaps an overabundance of title cards (which fair enough, we probably need.) Those who saw it back in the day must have felt somewhat uneasy.

Glad to catch this one - first screened in Naples in the Teatro Mercadante on March 10, 1911. It grossed more than $2 million in the United States, making it a huge success in it's day.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Dante's Inferno.

It's been a while since I've seen Dante's Inferno, but though it dragged at times, its best bits really stuck with me. The Satan scene at the end, in particular, is quite disturbing.

I was floored watching this movie. When you are simultaneously being moved by the film and moved by the filmmaking and moved by the sense that you feel you are watching something great the entire time, it makes for a powerful experience.
Instantly became an all-timer for me.

Et moi.

So it seems in the late 1920s a Soviet artist finally exploded with excitement about the possibilities film offered, and made a feature-length documentary artifact which explored as much of that possibility as it possibly could - at the same time capturing what life was like in Moscow, Kyiv and Odesa during the time period. If that sounds like a mouthful, it's because Man With a Movie Camera is an eyeful, and because it manages to say so much about the medium by employing an endless series of tricks, montage theory-like Soviet editing, basic life, magic, propaganda and delirious joy in regards to this new artform. The joy seems absolutely genuine. Usually, if I see a Soviet artist expressing joy, I think, "Is that real joy, or is that person successfully faking it because they're afraid they might suddenly "disappear"?" Obviously Dziga Vertov loved the medium, and devoted his life to it. Nothing could express that more than this film, and there's nothing that's contemporary which I can compare this with. There really ought to be. The movie camera has changed, and is still changing, humanity. Vertov's opus also defines a filmmaker as already a necessary cog in the machinery of socialist life by comparing them to all other levels of this workers paradise and making the camera socialism's eye organ-wise.

There is too much packed into this 68-minute film to cover in one review - Vertov employs mirrors, stills, stop-motion, split-screen, different sources of lighting, superimposition, changes in speed, reverse filming and other various methods to produce a whole array of interesting ways to tell his visual story. On the one hand it's a basic "day in the life of the Soviet Union", but on the other it's the very definition of what film is and what it can do, along with who we are as human beings, what life is all about, what socialist life is all about - and much more. It's never satisfied with just saying one thing - instead being a supercharged, manic race through one idea after the other as if there is simply so much to say here that it simply can't help having to keep up it's pace. We watch people do what's ordinary, and we watch people do extraordinary things as well. We see a baby being born, and what could possibly be a dying man loaded into an ambulance. We see a marriage, a divorce, and a funeral. We see miners working underground, and engineers working far, far above the ground. We see mother nature at her grandest, and we see the hectic bustling of a city overflowing with people, trams and traffic. We see nearly everything there is to see, and we also see how film can express ideas about all of these things in ways that no artform before it ever could. That's where the magic in this film really is.

I watched Man With a Movie Camera twice yesterday - once to music (there are many choices out there - I went with a suggestion that was offered to me), and once to commentary. The excitement Dziga Vertov displays is infectious (and if I'm not mistaken, that's his wife editing the film, which we see in the actual film. We actually see the watching of the film in the film too. The cameraman, Vertov's brother, Mikhail Kaufman, is often captured doing his work, which means there's someone filming someone filming) and I think that anyone who loves film will be able to recognize the passion for the way film can enrich the soul, and impart deeper understanding of many ideas and ideals through both the making and watching of movies. The fact that it's partly in service to a communist regime that had a blood-soaked dark side to it doesn't change how innovative it is, or how it seems foremost in service to moviemaking itself. There's simply too much in it that's readily identifiable to all of us, and little that alienates, sidestepping politics while still bowing down to the necessities of socialist filmmaking. In a few decades, filmmaking had gone from being a novelty to a whole new language of the human spirit - and Man With a Movie Camera is like a grand, comprehensive, celebratory example of that and much more.

Glad to catch this one - in Stephen Jay Schneider's 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Voted 8th greatest film ever made in Sight & Sound's 2012 critics poll (along with greatest documentary ever made.)




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Man With a Movie Camera.

Glad you enjoyed it! That's been an all-timer for me ever since I first watched it. I've yet to see a silent film with more visual and editing ingenuity to it.

There aren't many HBO-type 'movie of the week' television deals in my watchlist, but Citizen X made it there because I had obviously heard good things about it, and it happened to be about a subject I was very interested in : Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. All serial killers can be considered to be beasts, but the one who really earned the moniker was this savage predator who haunted the Soviet Union. Adults and children. Boys and girls. Chikatilo's victims varied, and his reign of terror lasted from 1978 to 1990, mostly because the Soviet system was ill-equipped when it came to this type of crime, and crime solving. Political officers claimed that the serial killer phenomenon was a product of the degenerate West, and refused to publicize what was happening - which meant nobody was aware a maniac killer was on the loose. With no possible help from the public, and limited resources, the hunt for the "Rostov Ripper" dragged on and on - with excoriated corpses steadily left in this man's wake. I'd read about this guy a little bit when he was originally caught, and whenever I discovered more I found the whole true crime matter utterly fascinating - the different culture, the monster, the hunt and the eventual capture, trial and execution all unique from other famous murder investigations. I looked forward to seeing what Citizen X was going to do with it.

Anyway, from what I could tell this was a more faithful retelling of the story than what I was expecting - at least in very general terms. Stephen Rea leads the cast as Lieutenant Viktor Burakov, starting as a forensic pathologist, and then suddenly becoming a detective, basically learning the job by trail and error. His bosses are a group of incompetent, blustery Soviet bureaucrats who often tie his hands because of ideology, political expediency, general prejudices and petty grievances. The most vocal among them is Bondarchuk, played by Joss Ackland in his usual villainous manner. Heading this council is Colonel (later General) Mikhail Fetisov, played by Donald Sutherland. The relationship between Fetisov and Burakov grows as time passes, and the two become firm friends - Sutherland is well suited to playing a Russian well-versed in sly bureaucratic maneuvering - the more poker-faced of the two. Stephen Rea treats his role as if Citizen X is the year's big Oscar contender, and gives it everything he has - so there's a funny dynamic there. Rounding out the cast is another big name : Max von Sydow drops in as psychiatrist Dr. Alexandr Bukhanovsky. Psychiatrists weren't exactly popular in the Soviet Union, and von Sydow plays with this, making Bukhanovsky a little timid and extremely careful. Playing Chikatilo is Jeffrey DeMunn - one of those 'seen him here and there' actors. Not a bad roster for a television production, and it was shot in Hungary, making this an above average movie of it's type.

Despite being described in some quarters as one of the best 'made-for-TV' movies ever made, at the end of the day it is a 'made-for-TV' movie - it has a score that sounds like it's been ripped straight from a public domain library, and the film as a whole doesn't get creative. In a way, I guess that really suits a film made about the Soviet Union - utilitarian, risk-averse and straightforward. This kind of filmmaking works pretty well when it's in service to a police procedural kind of narrative, and that's definitely what we have with Citizen X - from the first realizations of the fact that there's a serial killer on the loose to his capture and eventual execution, we're with the investigators (mainly Viktor Burakov - as always, standing in for a group of individual real-life detectives) every step of the way. It was interesting enough to watch, and you could really feel the pain of those whose frustration must have been at unbearable levels while this killer kept alluding detection, and the turmoil of trying to work in a system that frustrates your ability to do your job. This would probably serve well as an introduction - to get people interested (check out Harold Shipman: Doctor Death - I found out about Harold Shipman by watching that, and never looked back.) You won't learn a whole lot more than the basics. I enjoyed watching it though, and for what it was, I found it quite respectable and well made. Stephen Rea outdid himself in his role.

Glad to catch this one - based on Robert Cullen's non-fiction book The Killer Department. Donald Sutherland won a Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe. Stephen Rea won some awards at festival circuits.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Citizen X.

So, I was given a real snapshot of the entire world and humanity circa 1976 to 1981 last night watching Koyaanisqatsi - it seemed all-encompassing, but it mainly focused on our relationship with the environment, both natural and manmade. I felt very aware of the fact that I wasn't being shown any other lifeform - all of the shots were of vast landscapes or people. Before getting into that though, what is it? It's a series of moving images of the Earth and it's natural processes before segueing into a focus on mankind by way of showing what we're doing to the Earth, before finally finding itself amongst the madness of our cities. Amongst all of this we hear the chanting of the word "koyaanisqatsi" (it feels so uncomfortable to type "q" and not follow it with a "u" - the World Cup in Qatar should have got me used to that though) and the otherworldly music of the esteemed Philip Glass. There's no dialogue - we simply observe, and let the combination of visual and auditory inputs take us where Koyaanisqatsi wants us to go. You get the sense that there's a tidal wave of humanity - a hsunami - buffeting every corner of the globe. In the Hopi language, koyaanisqatsi means "life out of balance" - which is something nobody needs to convince me of, but seeing it in such a gloriously cinematic way is both disquieting and awesome at the same time.

As you'd imagine, all of the shots in Koyaanisqatsi need to be exceptionally interesting and captivating if this non-narrative documentary is going to hold a person's interest. Once an audience's mind starts to wander, it's pretty hard for a film like this to interrupt their thought processes. I did find that most of the shots were pretty spectacular. Godfrey Reggio gets a lot out of time lapse photography, and creates visual sequences which make the ordinary look particularly alien and extraordinary. I loved the colourful vision of city lights, and the way they look when life is sped up to show the continual flow of energy and powerful thrust of humanity which endlessly pulses like an alien heartbeat. I also loved the way sped up escalators in busy cities made the flow of people look like a human waterfall - you get a sense of scale when you realise just how many people are flowing by here. You start to become conscious of the sheer weight of numbers - more so than when you see this at normal speeds. Nothing beats the grandeur of this world's natural landscapes however - this planet has the most varied geology, landscapes and visual patterns in the entire solar system. In fact, I felt the urge to travel to the places I was being shown - because in person the beauty must be all the more spectacular.

The one overriding thought I had while watching this was the fact that since it was made, over 40 years have passed. That's over fifteen thousand days of humanity - individuals expending their ceaseless crusades in automobiles, operating machines and using various technological marvels - since these images were created. It's beyond my imagination, but Koyaanisqatsi helped me visualize it just a little better. By just observing without pontificating, this film has to be one of the most honest and upfront documentaries about our environment that has ever been made. You can't argue with what a camera captures, and it's up to you to make your own mind up when it comes to interpreting this dance with the world, humanity and our technology/industry. I thought the music was purely transcendental, and Ron Fricke's cinematography awe-inspiring. Some people might be challenged by something that has no dialogue - I don't know, perhaps the opposite is true, and Koyaanisqatsi is an easy watch. Undoubtedly, it's a little unnerving to consider where we are at our present moment in history - this wave of humanity and our hunger for more technology is certainly not going to restore the balance this film speaks of, and as such this movie simply becomes more and more relevant over time.

Glad to catch this one - Criterion #640 and in Steven Jay Schneider's 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, aesthetically, or historically significant".




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Koyaanisqatsi.

Just as it's title would suggest, our trip back in time to the Carpathian mountains in Ukraine during an era when local custom was everything is both strange and beautiful in this lauded Sergei Parajanov film. The Hutsuls, with their distinctive Ukrainian dress and nomadic, sheep-herding lifestyle, ended up in the mountains during the Mongol invasion of the 1200s, from which they were fleeing. As inhospitable as these icy mountains are, they adapted and became a unique breed of person - the subject of which here is Ivan (Ivan Mykolaichuk) and his 'Romeo and Juliet' tragic-fated love Marichka (Larisa Kadochnikova), made out to be a kind of local legend/folktale. Something to haunt these climbs like Catherine gliding over the moors in Wuthering Heights. We hear the Hutsuls sing about them, recite poems and generally make themselves known around the periphery of the movie - one that's easy to follow, but never rigidly straightforward. A dream of a movie, lost in snowdrifts, deep ravines, and spinning around oak, beech and wild apple trees. Vivid colours flash by and contrast with wide open spaces and miles of bright white ice, rocky outcrops and bare forest. The camera is as lively as an excited child on Christmas morning.

It's so easy to love this movie, and it's strange how the brutality we're witness to never dampens it's festive spirit. Within the film's opening few scenes we see Ivan lose a brother when a tree falls on him (after he saves Ivan by pushing him out of the way.) Apparently, Ivan is the last in a whole host of siblings his mother has lost, and it's not long before his father gets axed to death in a dispute with a wealthy landowner. Ivan is too small to seek revenge, but he takes the opportunity to bully little Marichka, who is the landowner's daughter. Marichka's cuteness is simply impervious to that - and it's not long before the two children are inseparable. The rest of the story is quite tragic, and during the darkest of times for Ivan the colour fades and we spend a portion of the movie in dull monochrome. When colour returns, it never reaches the brightness of Ivan's happy years - suffice to say that the cinematography remains brilliant throughout. I've never been as dizzy as when we whip around branches and dance with the Hutsuls, skip along, or race through thinly wooded areas. I've never seen colour, brightness and darkness as variable, or our mood as affected by mist. The camera itself feels like part of the story - a living embodiment of these people.

Damn, this is an absurd pleasure to watch - an intoxicating mix of old culture and creative filmmaking that translates as sublime beauty. Serene moments of flute playing accompany inventive camera movements, and as tragedy unfolds the light fades but I'm still transfixed and delighted. Red-hued transitions lead to new chapters in the story, and new approaches to how it's filmed. To think - a Soviet filmmaker went rogue to make this the way he wanted to, and Parajanov simply accepted what the ire of his overseers brought him. (Interesting to note that his next film, another Ukrainian-based piece, was pre-emptively banned during preproduction.) The folk songs we hear heartily sung, the strange traditions we see carried out and the general feeling of community make a complete believer out of me - it truly feels like we've taken a step backwards in time, and I completely lost myself in this movie. It's simply marvellous - a simple story told in a way that completely immerses you in an alien culture in a way that keeps reminding everyone of the magic and power of tradition, legends and folktales. I won't be forgetting it any time soon.

Glad to catch this one - In Steven Jay Schneider's 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and recently voted Best Restored Film at the 2023 Venice Film Festival.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.

I really need to rewatch Cleo. It's one of those greats that, while I like, has never affected me like it has so many others. Clearly I'm missing something.