Cries&Whispers

Solaris and Vertigo are amazing when mentioned together. Both are about male fantasy, but where Vertigo was a critique, Solaris was a stamp of approval. In Solaris the woman isn't just fantasized about, she is nothing more than a fantasy. In other words, the age old Adam-rib ideology. Woman is a product of man. Woman is nothing more than for the purpose of realizing man's fantasy. This obscene dialogue of clones and suicides is absolutely reconciled in Tarkovsky's version as being some sort of proper tension. I even like Soderbergh's version better, because there the ending is ambiguous. There, Kelvin is also suggested to be a fantasy. This is more than just some kind of progressive reversal, it's specifically the Vertigo reversal. James Stewart is an idiot in Vertigo. It's all his fantasy, but it's shown as such, and in the end he looses everything.

That's what I realized immediately! Just how much Rear Window was a critique/analysis on what the medium is. I love that so much. How L. B. is confined to his wheelchair and wincing as he watches Lisa go into the Thorwald's room. He whispers, "don't go in there!" like all of us have done during various murder/horror films at our favorite protagonist. Wonderful. Jeffries also asks at one point if it was wrong to watch a man only to prove he didn't commit murder. It's a great question about the morality of film. I also like how characters pass in and out of the window-film. They enter the forth wall and sometimes break it. That's the magical transmutation of form that 3D seeks to bring about isn't it? I see it as the destruction of the art.

I came to the realization that I need to finish Tarkovsky (feasible since I only have maybe three more films of his to watch) before I pick my favorite of his and watch more Ozu before I pick a favorite of his. Also, I recently rewatched Rear Window and Psycho... if Vertigo doesn't hold up on this rewatch (which I don't think it will), I'll have to rethink Hitchcock. I love it, because it has several meanings, but the surface film is too, as rufnek said, implausible and melodramatic. I didn't like RW because of the frequent women-in-the-kitchen scenes where Vertigo is the best critique of male objectification ever.

... I have to think ...

Cheers mate. I think planet news may have got their a little bit before you according to the posting time but 2nd place isn't too shabby