Late Spring

Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring (1949) is one of the most sympathetic portraits of the depths a family will go through in order to secure a life for their children. Yet, more problematically, the film is a portrait of the unwilling family forced into securing a path for the children that neither actually wants. This appeasement of the community, then, underscores the negative power of diplomacy and individual submission.

Widowed professor Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) spends his days devoted to his studies, entrusting his daughter Noriko (Setsuko Hara) with the household duties and cleaning. Unfortunately, his daughter is coming to the end of her mid-20s, a significant fact because she soon won’t be attractive to potential suitors. Yet she herself has seemingly distilled any desire for a spouse from her being, instead finding contentment looking after her father and his work. The constraints of family in this way offer for her a circuitous escape from marriage through non-action but, as Shukichi soon learns from his sister, such non-action will leave her without any chance of livelihood when he expires. As such, he must broach the undesired and push her out from her sheltering sanctuary.

What Ozu achieves in this film is a revealing glimpse into the character of Shukichi and Noriko. Both father and daughter have become complicit in their duplicity, relying on the other at the expense of true internal growth. The father has not been forced to remarry so that a potential spouse will have to look after him, and the daughter has avoided the pains of separation and fears of intimacy. Moreover, Noriko regards remarriages with disdain, as not being honorable to one’s true spouse, so her belief undermines Shukichi’s efforts to find himself a mate.

Where this film excels is its very human conceits of pushing away any prospect of love for the easy safety of family. Ozu understands and fully realizes the fidelity father and daughter show to each other, but lets them realize that such devotion is detrimental to their future success in the community. As such, Ozu fashions a story where maturity and growth are forcibly impressed on his characters, even as they themselves try to deny this imprint. Indeed, it is the outer conflicts of worry and gossip from the community that tries Shukichi’s hand, forcing him into deceit with his daughter by explaining his own impending marriage in order to secure her flight from the household.

Beneath these struggles, though, always lies the unmistakable impression of melancholy. Both father and daughter are losing something essential in this endeavor, and their truly final encounter together, going to see a Noh performance, is rife with misgivings and internal disappointment. Noriko will be sacrificing her domestic happiness and selfhood for a husband she’s not yet seen, one who “looks like Gary Cooper, around the mouth, but not the top part." This submission into ordinariness, while honorable, is not attractive, and Shukichi likewise loses his ability to concentrate fully on his discipline and is instead forced into looking for his own spouse.

As Late Spring builds toward its close, we see how communal and familial expectation lead to the shattering of these two individuals, neither of whom desired such a change. Yet their willingness to please the community gossip forces them into the predicament, and so the film closes on Shukichi peeling an apple until he finally submits to his solitude and grief, unable to suppress it any longer. A quietly devastating film.

Late Spring: 10/10

Martin

George A Romero's Martin (1977) is a meditative study on the titular character's theory that he is a vampire, aided by a possibly psychotic uncle, Tada Cuda, who can only think of Martin as Nosferatu. As a result, Martin prowls streetcars and neighborhoods, administering knock-out shots with a needle to those who seem to lack human purpose, drugging them so that he can then open a vein and drink their blood. While the film never explicitly answers the question of whether or not Martin is a vampire, Romero is clear in his use of black and white photography to suggest all of those old vampire serials that were big in the '30s and '40s, thereby suggesting the way in which being barraged with such imagery can psychologically influence the individual into truly believing in the "impossible." Filmed on location in Pittsburgh with little financial backing, this is obviously a labor of love for Romero.

Martin Madahas (John Amplas) is taken in by his uncle, a devout believer in the reality that half of the family is plagued with the Nosferatu curse. As such, cloves of garlic, mirrors, and crosses adorn the house, yet have little effect on Martin, as such trappings are merely storybook tales. Likewise, Martin has little effect on the ladies, having to drug them before getting them to reveal their bodies. It's a fascinating contrast, and allows Romero to deconstruct mythology from human fact, yet balance both in the character's mind.

Indeed, aided by a beautifully dirty and subjectively swaying camera that follows the action, Romero sets up a story of pathological fear in the vampire, Martin's unresolved guilt at the murders he commits, and the sociological implications of the media itself preying on the stories of a vampire in their midst. Martin often calls a radio program and confesses his deeds, yet it is clear that the DJ simply keeps Martin on the line because of the humor and ratings such tales bring with them. However, the film does take a decidedly nihilistic turn toward the end, as characters start to abandon their families, surrender to depression, and become caught in the mythology. As such, the last twenty minutes are especially solid, but the entirety of the film works beautifully as a meditation on the power of belief.

Martin: 9.5/10

Avalon

“You cut the turkey?”

After Casino and Aliens went on the short wait list from Netflix, I received the bailout from my film swap partner because he suggested a generational take on immigration, family deterioration, and the growth of technology. It is clear from that base synopsis that the hordes of Netflix patrons won’t be yammering for this one anytime soon, right? Yet Barry Levinson’s Avalon (1990) completes his Baltimore trilogy (the other two are still sight unseen by me) in fine fashion, relying on a film that emphasizes memory, the mobility of class – as well as the injurious gossip that sweeps headlong through the family as a result of that mobility – and the loyalty to one’s immediate family long after one’s entirely conscious of the loyalty.

If all of this sounds like your typical PG romp through U.S. history, it’s not. Levinson crafts the story so that it becomes localized around a single Russian family, the Krichinskys, rather than serving as a universal outline for the immigrant experience. Most of our narrator Sam Krichinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) tales are even tolerated but not really listened by the family, so dependent are the stories on repetition that the family has largely tired of the same old chronicles at Thanksgiving and the 4th of July. Moreover, memory has become so conflated in Sam’s mind that others are constantly reminding that this or that detail is wrong, superimposing the real memory over the initial flashback. This sort of fallibility deepens the narrative and exposes the narrativization of history as a flawed enterprise.

When the film shifts its focus from Sam onto his son, Jules (Aidan Quinn), the film starts to lose a little steam, becoming a checklist of the typical move toward suburbia with the retrospectively droll statements about why anyone would want to live in suburbia. Yet freshness still exists for the film, as it legitimately tackles issues of naming, immigrant experience, and identification. The sadness Sam feels at seeing Jules take the name Kaye over the Krichinsky family name possesses a power that is unexpected, revealing how much of a quality director Levinson is when he cares about his material (*cough* Sphere *cough*).

As earlier stated, the film starts to conform to the upward mobility story in the second act, detailing how Jules’ financial success threatens to tear apart the family, especially once family traditions are neglected in favor of pleasing the youth, leading to the ultimate laugh in the film as the perpetually late brother of Sam arrives… after they’ve already cut the turkey. The disgrace and humiliation felt at such disregard for waiting until everyone’s there soon splinters the family, but with the effects of technology and TV breaking out, such change is expected.

Where the film loses its momentum a bit is in its focus on Jules’ son, Michael (Elijah Wood). We are asked to believe Michael, or any child, is dumb enough to think lighting model airplanes on fire in the basement warehouses full of wood, cardboard, and hay is a bright idea. Moreover, the conclusion of the warehouse fire scene is a bit too heavy-handed and easy, allowing the mechanisms of the plot to be overtly emphasized.

When the film remains on Jules and Sam, though, the immersion of detail is realized and allows Levinson to chronicle a time-tested story in a visually luscious way, full of wonder and excitement. Actually, I cannot remember the last time a PG film was so affecting in its honest celebration of the human spirit. And while the finale of the film circles back upon itself a bit too carefully, it’s nonetheless a beautiful moment, articulating all the possibility that we hope America offers.

Avalon: 8.5/10

F For Fake

Author Tim O’Brien once noted that “the truth is insufficient for getting at the truth.” If there is one film that is most emblematic of this point, it is F for Fake. With F For Fake (1974), director/charlatan Orson Welles establishes the central conceit behind forgery, fakery, and implicitly all of cinema. Though this is a film conceived as a documentary of the painter Elmyr de Hory, a man who faked Picassos and sold them to the museums under false pretense, Welles takes the initial footage and begins to interweave fact with fiction, truth with lies, all while compounding which is which. That the film works so wonderfully speaks to the level of artifice and deception that Welles crafts onto his work.

Built around multiple levels of forgery being used to swindle the public into believing (with Elmyr, Irving, Hughes, Picasso, and Welles himself – in the form of Citizen Kane), Welles begins to essay his thesis that the level of craft and love devoted to a swindle may in fact offer up a deeper truth about reality and the desire to believe which a real work may be unable to do. That is, if the faker is willing to believe in the magic of his artifice enough, then his sleight of hand will go unnoticed because we do not actually wish to notice it.

The film offers a pretense to Welles’ central point by stating in the beginning that nothing in the next hour will be a lie. However, the film concludes by stating that a lie has just been told. What Welles intends to do with his audience is reveal the fantastic, to make us believe in it, and then to ask whether what he has just forged is so truly horrible, whether we were at the very least entertained and intrigued even if the feeling of foolishness does not abate. For it must be noted that the cinema involves lies 24 frames a second (with apologies to Haneke), and we are complicit in this lying, exempting the actor for the character, the stage for the location, and the camera as truthsayer, so the fact that Welles seeks to expose the very conceit of cinema is fascinating stuff, especially when contrasted against “everyday” scenes of him eating alongside Irving and Elmyr.

In gaining our trust with a promise but then reneging on it, Welles exposes a deeper issue of whether all of the arts are not fakes that have been granted legitimacy by critics extolling “two noses up” (with apologies to Pinky and the Brain), while sidelining those arts that are not read with the same sophisticated erudition as others. So imitation is not given the same respect as originality, yet these fakes are entirely original. It’s a fascinating endgame that Welles orchestrates, and the last twenty minutes of the film are gold.

While I don’t harbor as much love for this film as others, it’s a breathtaking journey into the heart of creativity, of fake creativity, and of the alliances that bind all of the arts together in conceits.

F for Fake: 9/10

3 Women

Robert Altman's 3 Women (1977) is a dreamscape that explores the enigmatic hesitancy of assigning meaning to a film that exists outside reason and logic. While the film is certainly rationally and philosophically coherent, its mysteries endanger viewers who are unwilling to forego explanations about why everything happens in the manner in which it does. This is instead a film dictated by its own circular logic, focusing on the reinterpretation of meaning as it complicates itself and collapses inward, yet always foregoing answers.

This is the story of Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), a young woman who ventures from the southern Midwest into the California desert to work at a senior care center. Pinky Rose is quiet and an introvert, which leads her to identify with the outgoing and loquacious Millie Lammoreaux (Shelly Duvall). She eventually moves in with Millie at her apartment, becoming dominated by Millie’s verbal belligerence and chronic weariness that soon becomes constantly directed at her. Meanwhile, Pinky Rose watches as Willie Hart (Janice Rule), a silent pregnant middle-aged female painter moves around the outskirts of the plot, always resisting categorization.

The way in which Pinky Rose and Millie interact, acting as opposite ends of a spectrum, eventually collapses halfway through the narrative as Pinky jumps off the second story landing into the outdoor pool below, going into a coma. When she comes out of the coma, her persona evaporates and is instead constituted by Millie’s former governance and authority. In turn, Millie loses her rationality and externalizes Pinky Rose’s former stifled and suppressed interiority. The adoption of identity is one of Altman’s key themes here and the expression of these ideas, dreamily represented by the submersion into water (re: amniotic fluid), leads the film into a murky area where consciousness is not cogently known, but rather understood piecemeal, revealing itself in gradual waves of knowledge.

The film, then, concludes by reprioritizing everything that has transpired into one last dreamily state of cognizance, as we start to understand how the events are “meant” to be read and character formations are “meant” to be understood. Those pesky quote unquote signs remain, though, because Altman and the film refuse to categorize rational thought to everything that has just been viewed. Its lucidity, that is, defies complete representation and leads merely to possibilities that are counterpoints to earlier mysteries and tones. And if that avoids answering why the film is so engaging, one starts to understand that the film gains its meaning precisely because of its avoidance of issues of ontology.

3 Women is a film that rewards any reading as possible, but also rewards the hesitancy that one brings to the film as events refuse to line up with rational meaning. The break halfway through the narrative, then, exists in the same way that Persona and Mulholland Dr. break from conventional narrative, exploring in metaphor the complex vicissitudes of memory, dream, and reality. If not Altman’s best film, this is certainly his most personal film.

3 Women: 10/10