Golgot's Reviews

Grizzly Man



The Colour of Devotion

Timothy Treadwell, an ex-alcoholic failed actor, has reinvented himself as the 'kind warrior' of Alaska's nature reserves - a heroic protector of the potentially deadly wildlife that gambols in the green fields & knotted woods spread out beneath invitingly pure summer skies. And it's there that he dies.

Red in Tooth and Claw

On one level, this is the strangest nature documentary you'll ever see. Foxes trot like pets behind our talismanic & troubled protagonist as he walks through panoramic grasslands towards sun-warmed mountains. Bears potter unconcernedly after him as he ambles up rock-churned streams. When they're not gouging chunks out of each other that is, and being shadowed in turn by our breathless host, who gives us their backstory, interprets their struggles, and feels he knows their dreams.

He will shout at the sky when the rain doesn't come, and mothers starved of salmon runs turn on their young. He will churn his own rocks to provide new streams, feeding his companions, saving himself from the horror of what nature can become.

Treadwell is our guide for much of the film, having shot fastidious amounts of footage for what he hopes will one day become a documentary series. But luckily this material fell into the hands of an eminently suitable director to craft a new story from them. Werner Herzog goes on his own journey throughout this film, meeting many irreverent & loving commentators on Treadwell's life, as he attempts to understand a man who is his polar opposite when it comes to seeing love in nature's maw.

Pious coroners, beach friends, ex-lovers & disproving locals try to fill in the details of this self-mythologising man-child, so in his element amongst the bears, so seemingly lost anywhere else. He gambled with his own life and that of his girlfriend, he gambled with the safety of the bears by acclimatising them to humans. And like many gamblers, who know the rules but stretch them, and try to create a reality they prefer, he's a fascinating and tragic figure to observe, as life's cards fall where they will.

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Glad you reviewed this, gg.

Treadwell was a fascinating persona, probably more ego-warrior than eco-warrior (copyright my own little reviewette but I like recycling quips in these recessionary times ) but fascinating nonetheless.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Some nifty thriftyness there sah Enjoyed your review too - think it was one of the ones that's had me itching to see this for ages

I did love that Herzog took this on - so obviously mystified by the eco-love on display (but also well versed in the ego-rants - which he compared to Kinsky's at one point i think )

Going to try to catch up on The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser next by him, another one with 'true tale' trappings i believe.

Aye, Werner seems to be drawn to these charismatic, almost Messianic figures - whether that was just because it was Kinski's stock-in-trade character, I dunno.

I suppose if you look at something like God's Angry Man (and Grizzly Man) there's more to it than bonkers old Klaus...

Waltz with Bashir



The Background

Documentary about Apocalypse Now meeting I Heart Huckabees in a bar, and deciding to dress up like A Scanner Darkly. (Altho i may be remembering some of that wrong).

The Front

What's real, and painted large, and made wonderfully accessible here, are the mixed reminiscences of a lot of once-young men, who were part of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

As they claw their way through the jumbled memories of that traumatic time, we're presented with numerous waves of sensory juxtapositions, transporting us from a noir-ish beginning through a welter of dreams, documented-deliberations & distant screams moving ever closer. Classical music plays as luxurious vines are parted, and an RPG-wielding kid dispatched. Rock-powered military-exchanges take place like 80s computer games, as if responding to feverish button-taps. We see it all through the 'dissociative camera' of the frequently wonderful animation, but the associations it brings out still leave their mark.

As much as this film is embedded in Middle Eastern, and particularly Israeli, concerns, I don't feel I brought much away from it on that front, however. If anything, the end feels unsatisfying, as reminiscences coalesce suddenly into a coherent whole, a stab at defining history. It seemed on stronger ground when the contributors -including the director- admitted they were unable to recall the whole, and settled instead for tracing their own scars, seeing where they might lead.

For what it's worth, here's the other stuff that bothered me about the end of Waltz...



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Sorry man, missed this. Oo, hadn't even heard of that one. I need to see a lot more of his stuff (Dieter Learns to Fly, for example, for another trip into idiosyncratic-iconclast-ville, for a start). The only other strand i've picked up on in his work is this whole 'nature is a beast' thing, which seemed to be evident in Wild Blue Yonder too, and Aguirre / Fitzcarraldo for sure.

God's Angry Man is a semi-interesting, less-than-an-hour-long TV show Herzog made for German TV about a religious show guy from here in Orange County, the late Gene Scott. My friends and I used to watch his show (which was more entertaining and enlightening than the Herzog flick) because he started out as a complete wacko but then when the "authorities" went after him, he got all subdued and started to make sense. I'd never really watch a show all the way through because it still was full of self-aggrandizement and calls out for contributions, but the way the guy evolved almost reminds me of what meatwad has done around here.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Cheers m

You've persecuted young spam-a-lot into shape?

Great review for Grizzly Man. I'll avoid reading the review of Waltz With Bashir until after I've seen it as I'm really looking forward to it and prefer to go in with little knowledge of the films plot.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Cheers man I keep the ole reviews pretty spoiler-free, but fair play, it's always best to go in with a clean slate isn't it. Be good to hear your thoughts after tho (i know you don't do reviews much, but i had a few wrangles with it, be interesting to see if you have a similar take )

That's my opinion, the less I know the better, makes for a better experience I find. All I need to know about that particular film is that I haven't seen a negative rating yet, and it looks visually interesting.

I gave it a and I think it totally got jobbed by the Oscars. That being said, and to try and not spoil it too much for you Harry, it is a very different film. Possibly or maybe probably why it got snubbed.

I can understand what you mean thought Gols, I also felt a little bit led towards the end and yet I was still just fixated by the overall substance and emotional storyline to be turned off by it. And this is coming from someone who typically doesn't get into these atrocity types of films. I have a hard time saying, "Oh yeah, Waltz With Bashir! Super good movie dude!" You know?

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

The Death of Mr Lazarescu



Remedial Folk

When an ageing father is taken ill in his Romanian tower block a set of social security nets try to catch his fall.

'But no chemicals'

There's no soundscape to carry you through this film. You play the emotional detective as long takes absorb the chattel of one man's life.

Its pot-boiler approach churns intriguing ingredients to the surface at first, then enters the dyspeptic world of the hospitals. Be prepared for dourness, power games, and a care community stretched to the max. Caustic humour and a web of catching hands try to stand our protagonist on his feet. Little exchanges illuminate long meetings. People get reduced to notes and anecdotes, but personalities survive in this tale.

Disclosure: I missed the first ten minutes of this, and an annoying digibox update robbed me of another midway. But having worked fleetingly in medical professions, I can only gawp at the cast-wide verisimilitude on display.

+

I really liked The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, gave it a 4/5 myself. Too bad you missed the first ten minutes plus another ten in the middle of the film.

It certainly is Mr H. I had the feeling it was a long-play film, and it turned out to be. I'm pretty hesitant about diving into it again, because it was an endurance test, even if it ended up delivering a full on mortality kick. Definitely will revisit tho if i get the chance.

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EDIT: Plus i'm an incorrigible bastard when it comes to ratings I've added a clunky plus to the rating though, as I suspect it's a 4-star film for me too, when it's there in its entirety

The Lady from Shanghai



Noirish to Meet You

A pugilistic Irish chancer comes to the rescue of a damsel in distress, then gets drawn into working a boat for her infamous lawyer husband.

Cut to the Chase

Apparently cut to ribbons by the studios, there's still plenty of silky anarchy here, even if it is all tied up in a hurried bow.

Eccentric characters sweat in the broth of their own intrigues as they sail around exotic locations, taking the odd picnic amongst ravenous crocodiles. Events can't stay deceptively idyllic forever though, and with our protagonist already having professed himself a murderer, it's not long before others come calling on his baser nature.

This early noir has plenty of invention pulsing under the skin of its evil lawyers, hired detectives, and femme fatales. Always check for the extra set of serrated teeth behind their grimaces and smiles (even if the twist feels, if not telegraphed, somewhat phoned in). It would have been grand to see the elongated tension that Welles clearly had in mind.

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Well, as far as I can tell, the only flick which Welles was allowed to put out with no impedence was the one that William Randolph Hearst wanted to kill the most. Apparently, Hearst wasn't quick enough to kill Kane but he was able to emasculate most of Welles' American flicks and chase him away from the country and even cause Welles more problems, even after Hearst died. That makes Hearst a MoFo, but not in any positive way. Even so, I recommend you go check out San Simeon (Hearst's Castle) if you have the chance.

If i ever make it stateside again, i will endeavour to visit the ole storyteller's pad

I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK



Dayglo Darkness

A young factory worker, who has already lost her grandmother to state care (for acting like a mouse & over-eating pickled beetroot), receives instructions from a treasured radio that she should splice its wires into her veins and plug herself into the mains. Because she's a cyborg you see.

Wearing her grandmother's abandoned dentures and refusing to eat (on account of the damage it would do to her workings), our heroine tries to charge herself up to the point where she can wreck a terrible revenge on her white coated nemeses. Before she gets interrupted by a thief who likes to trade mental beliefs.

Hardly Toothless

Although the opening half hour felt an uncaring and callow take on mental illness, this does actually flower into something pretty touching. The Amelie-homages and stock 'Cuckoo's Nest' characters seemed at odds with the Tetsuo-lite body-splicing & other themes of mental distress at first, but as we stick with the characters the two styles of 'demented escapism' and genuine strifes slowly merge and start to complement each other.

Once the love-story-of-sorts is under way the Edelweiss music becomes explicable and welcome, the supporting cast become more complicit in the plot & the excesses of the dream-like carnage scenes seem to have served a sounder purpose than just cutesy visual profanity. It still seems too cartoony at times (bruises disappearing in a flash between 'real life' scenes), and for every successfully crafted bit of comedy there's a lull or missed beat, but the fact they got it to work at all makes it something of a treat

(+)

My god, this is a real movie? This sounds fantastic! I hope I can track this down.