In May I was home for a few weeks, and took advantage of the amazing St. Louis library system to knock several films off my 2007 Goal list. Then I got burned out on that and just watched some random old stuff. After the jump, reactions to Spider-Man 3, The Great Dictator, They Were Expendable, Taxi Driver, Unforgiven, The New World, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and more.
I have a Music post in the works, but I was focusing on getting this thing finished. Tomorrow.
I’ve still only seen a small percentage of Jean-Luc Godard‘s total number of films, which I regard as a good thing, because it means I will have many future wonderful Godard film experiences. If you’d asked me two months ago whether François Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard were the better filmmaker (or at least my favorite filmmaker), I would have said Truffaut without batting an eye. But the decision would have been hasty, and after Breathless, Band of Outsiders, A Woman is a Woman and My Life to Life (and Contempt, but I need a rewatch on that one) I’m pretty much a Godard fangirl. In addition to his films being enjoyable on their own terms, they’re also like mini-courses in cinema technique and history. Which I suppose is unsurprising for a filmmaker who started as a cinephile at the Cinématheque Française and critic for the Cahiers du cinéma.
Video clips and discussion of Band of Outsiders, A Woman is a Woman and My Life to Live after the cut. Yes, I should’ve included something from Breathless as well, but it’s been a while since I saw it, so I would be less competent at choosing and discussing clips. Incidentally, July 11 has apparently been declared Fair Use Day, and the use of film clips for purposes of criticism and education falls under fair use, so even though I’ve been planning this post for a few days, it’s appropriate that it worked out for me to post it today.
There’s no So You Think You Can Dance this week! I’m totally bummed. I’ve been looking forward to it all week. Wah. I guess they figured they wouldn’t get anyone watching on the fourth of July. Oh, yeah, Happy Independence Day, everybody! Still. I don’t like when my TV is postponed, even for important national holidays.
I am celebrating by watching all the Matrix movies in a row, because I have this theory that the third one might work better if the story is seen as a whole rather than as pieces. I’m not sure, though. I just finished rewatching the second (spoilers follow, if you haven’t seen it), and it’s still fun, but I’m still not loving the Agent Smith subplot, which as I recall, gets even more screen time in the third one (I haven’t seen it since it came out in 2003…was that almost four years ago? Geez!). Though I remember being upset the first time I watched them that Reloaded negated the whole narrative thrust of the first film, I’m liking that aspect better and better. After all, if the Matrix is a construct, meant to keep control over humanity, why shouldn’t the myth about the One also be a construct? The subversion is subverted. It’s only good postmodernism to have as many layers of simulation as possible, right? (I was particularly amused to notice the use of Baudrillard’s book Simulacra and Simulation in Neo’s apartment this time around, after just having written a paper which tangentially mentioned Baudrillard–and not only does the book suggest the constructedness of Neo’s world, but he’s even hollowed out the inside of it as a safe–the book itself is only a simulacra of a book! Say whatever you want, those Wachowski brothers are smart sometimes.)
Incidentally, if you’ve only seen the Matrix theatrical films, I’d encourage you to also get a hold of The Animatrix, a set of nine animated short films released between The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded, which fill in some of the gaps in the narrative of Reloaded and Revolutions, and are really good in and of themselves. And while you’re filling in gaps, read Henry Jenkins’ book Convergence Culture, especially the chapter on The Matrix as transmedia storytelling, because I think one of the reasons the last two films seem so incoherent at times is because they really do require knowledge of the sections of the story told in The Animatrix, the video game Enter the Matrix (basically you play Niobe and her second-in-command Ghost during all the parts that they’re off-screen during The Matrix Reloaded, including some parts which are directly related to the on-screen action, like blowing up the power plant), and the comic books series (which I, regrettably, did not read), and the moviegoing public just wasn’t yet ready to deal with a story that didn’t give all of its narrative through the films. We probably still aren’t. Anyway, it was an interesting experiment, and one that I bet will get more popular as we get more used to it (“Lost” and “Heroes” have utilized transmedia storytelling to some extent, as well, but not to the extent that The Matrix tried to do). Of course, I’m still not sure that the third film is actually any good, with or without the transmedia knowledge. I’m about to start it now…we’ll see.
edit: I’m still not sure. I did like it better than I did the first time I saw it, and I do think that the second two benefit from being seen back to back with the first one from a narrative point of view. Still, Smith’s arc is not sufficiently explained in either Reloaded or Revolutions. It seems like in Reloaded he’s just got a personal vendetta against Neo for killing him, but in Revolutions he’s got bigger designs. Or else, he’s always only got a vendetta, and the bigger implications for both human and machine world are just bonus. Also, having thousands of Smiths is pointless, and only serves to allow for the pointless Neo vs. thousands-of-Smiths fight in Reloaded. It would have been more to the point if his taking over other people had resulted in him gaining their abilities/identities, but not creating a clone of himself. I think that also would have made more clear the Oracle’s role in his downfall. Hmm. I think after this experiment I would say that it hangs together as a trilogy better than I thought it did upon first viewing, but not as well as it theoretically should hang together. But I’m no longer bothered by the fact that the second two seem to negate the first one–really, the myth of the One was more powerful than the Architect thought it was. In fact, it was just as powerful as the Oracle thought it was…she just had to wait for six generations of chosen ones to find the real One. And of course, the first one remains incredibly superior to the other two–it’s the only one that stands on its own, and it’s the only one that brings me back to watch it over and over. This has to be the tenth time I’ve seen it. But I’m glad I did this, and I have slightly more respect for the whole trilogy (quadrilogy if you include The Animatrix, which I did watch as well today) than I did before.
I mentioned yesterday being obsessed with Paris lately; a good chunk of that is watching more French films, most of them set in Paris (Godard‘s Band of Outsiders and Une femme est une femme, Melville‘s Bob le flambeur, the recent Avenue Montaigne and Paris, je t’aime). Also, trying to learn more about the French New Wave, which grew up in Paris, around the Cinematheque Française. When considering the question of what historical time and place I would want to go back to if I could go back in time, I always used to say the Old West, around the time the railroads were being built. I’d still like that, but I think now I might choose 1950s-60s Paris, so I could attend the Cinematheque Française and witness the revitalization of American genre film and the birth of the New Wave. Not to mention getting to see all those classic films on the big screen with other cinephiles! This video clip is from a documentary about Bernardo Bertolucci‘s film The Dreamers, which is set in the mid-1960s, when the Cinematheque founder Henri Langlois was removed from its administration by the French government, much to the outrage of the film community. I’ve reedited the clip a bit to highlight the Cinematheque more than The Dreamers. ;) The first male voiceover is Bertolucci, and the color clips are from The Dreamers; Matthew is the main character of the film. The rest is documentary footage from the 1960s.
*sigh* Ah, well.
If I can’t go to the original Cinematheque Française (it still exists, but in a different place, and obviously Langlois is no longer around), can I at least go to New York’s Film Forum? Look at their list of showings this summer: Metropolis, Laura, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Lost Weekend, Taxi Driver, Cat People, Rear Window, Rope, The Wrong Man, Wait Until Dark, Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina, Silk Stockings, Blood and Sand, The 400 Blows, La Chinoise…and more! Wow. If I lived in New York, I fear movie-going would threaten to overshadow rent in significant expenses. Maybe I could just live at Film Forum. That’d be more efficient.
I have pondered before whether the French New Wave was perhaps when Modernism hit film, after it hit literature in the 1920s…there still might be some things to support that, but having now seen a few more Jean-Luc Godard films, it’s clear he’s very much postmodern in his reappropriation of earlier film, hugely self-conscious techniques, etc. I’m working on a paper comparing Modernism to Postmodernism in the literary sphere, and the more I read about, the more I think that in a way, Modern vs. Postmodern is a mindset, almost…there were writers doing Postmodern things in the 1920s, and there were Modernist writers in the 1960s–certainly I’m having trouble believing that Postmodernism is as much a rejection of Modernism as Postmodernists would like us to think; it seems to me much more an extension and enlarging than a rejection. Anyway, here’s my new pondering: Is it possible that François Truffaut, with his detached yet subjective philosophical realism which owes more to the high art Italian Neorealism than it does to American B cinema, is the Modernist side of the New Wave and Godard, with his self-reflexivity and dependence on intertextual tropes from low-art crime film, is the Postmodern side? I’m not sure that wholly holds up, either…I’m about to rewatch Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, which is more heavily influenced by American genre film. This pondering is stemming from the differences between The 400 Blows (Truffaut’s first and arguably most important film) and Breathless (Godard’s equivalent masterpiece).
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