Guys!  This is the longest Collections Project I've uploaded.   There are a lot of films that I watched and wrote about.  I have a pretty impressive knowledge of Ingmar Bergman's movies.  I'm not saying that they are accurate assessments of his movies.  I'm just saying that I've seen them and have written about them!  Check them out here!

Not rated and it's pretty darned tame.  If the film Fanny and Alexander has some questionable content, it's not like the documentary that Bergman threw together was going to harp on that stuff too much.  While the movie does discuss the scene where the guardian angel has an uncomfortable moment with Alexander, it's not treated in an exploitative way.  If anything, the film could have gone a little harder into the some of the questionable content involved in shooting a movie with kids.  Still, this is probably the most wholesome content associated with Ingmar Bergman.

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

I'm so glad that this is the last thing that I watched.   A little context (because that's what I always do as a warm-up paragraph), I normally don't write about what I consider to be special features.  I always thought it was weird that Criterion made The Making of Fanny and Alexander a separate spine number.  But, also, in the back of my stupid head, I think that there's a world where I will have written about every Criterion entry.  Like, we know that this is a fool's errand.  But I went as far as to make a Criterion page on this blog, so here I am writing about The Making of Fanny and Alexander.  

But I also have to mention that this is the last entry in the Ingmar Bergman mega box from Criterion.  It took me two years to watched everything in there.  I know.  That's not that much time.  I'm sure that with the sheer number of movies in that box set, there are people who will never finish it.  That being said, it felt like a really long time for me.  Maybe it is because I used to do entire directors' retrospectives within a weekend.  Those were the glory days of no responsibility.  Still, I'm proud of myself, you know?  Bergman was harder to get through than I thought that he would be.  I bought that mega box having mostly just seen The Seventh Seal and Fanny and Alexander, so I thought that they'd all be bangers.  And I know that most film fans probably liked a lot of the movies that I didn't care for.  (I just remembered that I had seen way more of Bergman's stuff than those two, but I think I was in the glorious limelight of two movies that absolutely destroyed me.) 

But I said that I was glad that this was the last movie that I watched in the box set.  This box set had me create a headcanon for Ingmar Bergman, simply because Bergman had a lot of these bummer themes pop up in a lot of his movies.  I have to say, after watching these movies, I started to get a healthy paranoia about the man.  I would rank all of these Bergman movies lower than most people on Letterboxd.  Not insanely lower.  But what other people would label as complete classics, I sometimes left with a sour taste in my mouth because I had just watched so many Bergman movies where men were simply expected to cheat. That healthy paranoia, by the way, also led me down so many Wikipedia rabbit holes where I tried to discover what made Bergman so obsessed with male infidelity.  I found out that he had multiple divorces and I simply assumed that he was this miserable and lecherous person.  Now, I'm not saying he's not that thing.  But this Making of Fanny and Alexander presented a very different person than I was prepped for.

I'm going to say something incredibly stupid right now.  That's probably par-for-the-course when it comes to my blogging about Ingmar Bergman.  The dumb thing is that he looked different than I thought he would.  I don't know why I imagined this emaciated guy who was pale and probably had bony fingers.  I expected this grumpy old turd who yelled at people until he got the shot he wanted.  Instead, we get this portrait of an older, but healthier guy.  He seemed to really enjoy making movies and liked hanging out with kids.  The rapport he kept on the set seemed welcoming and positive.  And here's these movies where guys tank their marriages and spit on religion.  Instead, we get a fun uncle vibe who makes movies sets fun to hang out on.  Now I don't know what to think.

I don't think that I'm going to have the longest blog about The Making of Fanny and Alexander.  I can force myself to see why Criterion made this its own spine.  Besides being directed by Ingmar Bergman, it isn't the structure of a traditional documentary.  Between this and Burden of Dreams, I can't think of any film in the Criterion Collection that is about another movie and how it was made.  This isn't exactly Burden of Dreams.  Instead, this honestly feels more like a home movie.  Bergman is open about that from moment one with his intertitles.  He says that this is more of a way to preserve a memory about a positive time in his life.  He's reflecting on his own footage not necessarily from an educational perspective, but more of an emotional moment.  He seems to watch the footage fondly, almost separating it from Fanny and Alexander itself.  Instead, we get a preservation of what it was like to work with the same people over and over again and the cameraderie that he builds on set.

It's not like Bergman has nothing to say.  (By the way, if he had nothing to say and this was just an emotional throwback to a happier time, that is also pretty fine. We just wouldn't really have this paragraph.)  A not-nothing percentage of the film is devoted to Gunnar Bjornstrand (I think!  I'm really doubting it, but I can't find out without rewatching the film and I'm not there at 12:07 am).  For the sake of argument, let's pretend I'm right about who its about.  The point is that there's a heartbreaking part of the film where an actor, who I think is Bjornstrand, struggling with a very difficult song to get out.  He's playing an actor who has to sing a portion from Twelfth Night with a lit candle on his head while a rain machine is hitting an umbrella over him.  For this, Bergman's got commentary.  He says as much.

It is heartbreaking. Bergman sees taht Bjonstrand is aging here.  He used to have things come easily to him and now we see that there's this desperate gratitude behind his performance.  By the way, every take that Bjornstrand does is fine.  From any stretch of the imagination, Bergman could have taken almost any one of those takes.  But it's not what Bergman was looking for and Bjornstrand never fights Bergman on any of these things.  And some of these takes are truly heartbreaking.  There's one take where Bjornstrand can't hold his hand still while he's holding the umbrella.  Like, it's a small moment, but it's the point of the entire sequence.  It's something that he used to be able to do comfortably and now, in his old age, its a chore to do something so simple.

The best thing about this is that I'm forced to reconcile my headcanon with reality.  Sure, Bergman is the guy who made this documentary.  If he really wanted to make something that would make people like him as a filmmaker, maybe this is the thing that he created to shape that narrative. Still, I don't get that.  Bergman, for all of my bemoaning of some of his films, is never one to avoid a challenge.  Instead, I think he's just a guy who liked doing what he did.  Maybe I was so prepped to apply an archetype to him that I forgot that he could just be a guy.  There was probably a reason that he had an acting troupe that he kept working with over and over.  They probably liked working with him and saw that he wasn't just talented, but a good dude.  It's nice.  I watched all these movies and this film finally let him take a bow for all the movies I just watched.

Not rated, but there is a not-nothing amount of nudity in this movie, including the obscured rear end of a little boy swimming in a lake.  There's also a chicken that is slaughtered off camera.  In terms of violence, language, or sexuality, it's all pretty minimal.  The nudity is never in the context of sex.  Instead, the movie assumed that was just part of storytelling.  (I had a weird thought during this scene.  I wonder what the ratio between men showing in movies versus women showering in movies is.  I bet that number is worrisome.)

DIRECTOR:  Andrei Tarkovsky

I'm in trouble here.  (I almost wrote, "I'm cooked", but that seemed like I was trying too hard.)  I can tell you right now that I didn't get it.  I needed Wikipedia to pull me out of the fire.  And as much as I learned about the movie from Wikipedia, I don't know if it gave me enough information to form a smart read on the movie.  I tend not to like experimental or avant-garde movies too much, despite the fact that I watch my fair share of them.   I have to throw in a caveat:  I like Tarkovsky more than most experimental directors.  I really liked Stalker and a lot of the visuals of Mirror remind me of what was done with Stalker.  

The real crazy thing is that I feel like I've seen this movie before. I mean, I know I didn't.  I don't have any record of having seen this movie.  It's pretty new on my shelf.  It's just that I've watched so many video essays on filmmakers that I've seen the sequence of the house burning down enough times to make me question whether or not I've seen Mirror.  I actually had to do a search of all my previous blog entries to ensure that I hadn't written about this movie before.  For the sake of a moderate amount of confidence, I can safely say that I didn't remember any other parts besides the house burning down, so that has to be an indication that the only experience I have with this movie is in clips about Tarkovsky.  

There's something specifically nostalgic about Mirror for me.  There's a great line where the narrator accuses his wife (?) of having an affair with a Ukrainian.  The accusation is worded "Is he Ukrainian?" as if that was the worst thing in the world.  I grew up in a very Ukrainian household.  I'm sure that the biggest let down to my father in heaven and my extended family is how much I suck at being Ukrainian. I'm incredibly proud of my heritage and I won't shut up about the war in Ukraine (as a blue and yellow flag flaps in the breeze outside my house).  But culturally, the Ukrainian stuff was all my dad.  My dad was a poet among other things.  And one of the throughlines of Mirror is that this is the story of a Russian (I know, it's very different) poet reading his poems as he reflects on the important events of his life.  Those poems, though, that sounds exactly like what my house sounded like.  There's a cadence to Eastern European poetry that American poetry doesn't really have.  It weirded me out quite a bit.  Even though the language was slightly different, I couldn't help but hear my dad reciting poetry.  It's a thing that I never got behind, even though I took numerous poetry courses.  

Anyway, I have to voice my frustration with this movie.  It's not a perfect like or a perfect dislike.  For some reason, even though I gripe about the avant garde a lot, I seem to give Tarkovsky more of a pass than I do other artists.  Maybe it comes down the impact of Tarkovsky's images.  Man alive, do I love how these movies look like.  They are absolutely gorgeous shots, which makes me tolerate a story that should be hitting me harder.

You know what?  It's kind of hitting me right now.  Yes, I read the Wikipedia article on this movie.  Yes, I get what little narrative is happening in the film.  But I also realize that I, as always, am way too attached to narrative and not enough to emotion.  If the protagonist is a poet and poetry is used to establish mood in this movie, I have to abandon my desperate attempt to hold onto narrative poetry and treat the film as lyric poetry.  That's why the images work so well with me, because the entire movie is about the mood.  We're meant to feel more than we're meant to understand.  It's not like Tarkovsky is intentionally being obtuse.  I mean, I don't love the fact that he throws a few dream sequences into the film without giving us a lot of context to unpack those dream sequences.  But if I abandon my desperate need for everything to make sense, it is about feeling what a life is about instead of understanding what life is about.

From what the Wikipedia article said, the film has semi-autobiographical elements to it.  It isn't much of a leap to read the notion of a poet reflecting on his life as a director doing the same thing.  To spell it out more than I'd care to, both are creatives who probably carry some of those in-the-moment emotionally distant reactions in real time, but reflect on a life of rudeness with a sense of self-flaggelation.  Okay, that might give me some peace about my frustrations with the movie.  Still, I want to vocalize why those moments really bum me out.

To keep the movie as gorgeous as it is, Tarkovsky thinks cinematically.  But Tarkovsky has some very important rules to tell his story.  One of the key concepts is that the protagonist is unseen.  The phrase I want to use is "subjective camera."  But that's the issue.  The film doesn't use a subjective camera.  The camera moves like a camera.  There are cuts.  It pans and zooms.  It does the things a camera is supposed to do, not a person.  So the way I viewed it is that the story is about the people that the poet is talking to, not the poet himself.  It actually seems, for chunks of the movie anyway, that the movie is about a woman --who plays multiple parts, despending on what era we're in for the film.  So for a solid percentage of the movie, I kept trying to see how people related to the woman, not how the woman related to the poet.  Honestly, I thought that the movie was being cheeky about the poet.  And just to make cinema fans go nuts, I thought it was like Home Improvement and Wilson.  We weren't seeing him just to prove a point.

But then, later in the movie, we see the poet...I think.  The movie, when it flashes back to the past, we see the poet as a boy.  Now, in retrospect, I actually intellectually understand this choice.  Our childhood selves with almost view as different people.  I, too, think of my past cinematically.  The problem is...I have to make that logical leap.  There's this idea about visual arts that we shouldn't be told how to think.  We're meant to react.  We mostly won't get what the artist was actually going for.  But I do think that Tarkovsky doesn't give a crap what we necessarily understand.  The worst part is that Tarkovsky isn't the most obtuse director out there.  I think a lot of the problem is me.  I think I want to be smarter sometimes.  I don't have my phone.  I watch the film the entire time.  I just have my mind wander when I don't always understand it.  

Is it pretty?  Without a doubt.  Tarkovsky is one of the most gorgeous filmmakers out there.  But did I get the emotional response that the movie asked me to make? Not really.  I think it does a lot, but not the things that it wanted to do with me.  

I'm changing things up.  I have The Complete Films of Agnes Varda box set.  At first, I thought that this meant only the feature length films.  Nope.  This includes the short films as well.  Since I'm painfully a completionist, I'm watching all of these short films as well.  But I also know that I can't write an essay about each and every one of these movies.  So instead, I'll do some blurbs about each one as I watch them.  So I'll keep updating as I go along.

Les 3 boutons (2015) -I think I like Varda's early work a lot.  I've talked about this in Varda by Agnes and Visages / Villages.  It just seems like it was trying less to be art and simply was art back in the day.  Again, I don't mean to poo-poo.  Varda has more artistic merit in her pinky than I'll ever have.  To a certain extent, this movie felt like some of her earlier work.  It had a narrative.  It had a confusing narrative, but it was a narrative.  But in the mix of visuals, I kind of lost the point of it besides looking pretty and being artsy.

Ô saisons, ô châteaux (1958) -There is something incredibly satisfying about this.  There's an innocence to Varda as she's making what ultimately is a comissioned travel film. She seems worried about upsetting those who are hiring her while trying to maintain an artistic integrity and it is near perfect.  Yeah, it's a travel promo film.  It's the equivalent of a town asking for an extended infomercial.  But it works so well.  But not as well as...

Du côté de la côte (1958) -...this.  In the same year, she's hired for basically the same job with the French Riviera.  Then she just goes bananas and makes her own art film that happens to be emotionally about the French Riviera.  When the folks who hired her saw that she claimed that the best view is from the grave, were they all excited about it?  This is Varda that I adore.  She's spunky and adorable and has social commentary, even when she's hired for travel videos.

L'opera-mouffe (1958) -I'm living with a very pregnant lady right now.  She doesn't go around the streets of Paris making little art films.  This one is pretty.  Maybe things in black-and-white get a little bit of a pass compared to things in color.  I'm not normally a fan of strictly experimental cinema, but this mostly works for me.  Maybe because it is so hypnotic and relaxing that one can't help and view the movie through the lens of calm.  It's sad at times.  I lost myself in my own mortality watching this one today.  There was this old woman who looked so rough and the camera just stayed on her for longer than was appropriate.  I then realized that this lady, along with almost everyone involved in this movie, was probably dead.  But that old lady also has this specific form of immortality because film snobs like me will watch everything that Agnes Varda has ever made.

Les dites cariatides (1984) -Varda still has it going on in 1984.  I think it is when film goes digital is when I get off the Varda train.  I think she picks her shots so beautifully when film costs money that, when it is disposable, she doesn't quite get that same sense of grandeur.  She has a specific subgenre of experimental art film.  It's almost a documentary, but with little done in terms of informing.  Varda shows all of these women carved into stone and tells the story of the inspiration of these pieces.  But the point of the documentary is not to have you leave and tell your friends about what you learned, but to experience the same sense of awe that Varda does while looking at these moments.  The 2005 update doesn't really deserve its own section.  That's just someone's slideshow of statues.  But it shows what can happen when a filmmaker really pays attention to the small stuff.

T'as de beaux escaliers, tu sais (1986) -I almost didn't write about this.  I'm actually kind of amazed that I found an image of this.  It actually is probably from another movie.  It's funny.  Varda says that this isn't an advertisement; it's a documentary.  It's both. It's an excuse to say that Varda really likes film and I have no problem with that.  It's what I really like and to claim that this is my favorite of Varda's shorts is a bit too much fan service.  Doesn't mean that I don't like it.

Le lion volatil (2003) -Man, Agnes Varda --especially older Agnes Varda --was a sassy old lady.  In the introduction to this piece, she spills all the tea about how her producer disappeared with all of the money that was meant to make this short into a feature length film.  I'm already starting to see some of the weaknesses of Varda in 2003.  She wants this to be this heady piece about love around this neighborhood, but it all feels a bit forced compared to the other stuff we've seen.  It's cute and I like the fact that it has a narrative.  But it also wears 2003 really hard.

Elsa la rose (1966) -My goodness, I don't want to write about this right now.  The odd part is that I really like a lot about this short film.  I just wrote about Les creatures, where I feel like Varda is trying to be artsy.  Instead, we see honest-to-goodness art here.  She's in the zone with this one.  Maybe she does better with earnest reactions versus trying to reconstruct something.  She is making this almost as a commission.  She took the love between these two people and didn't try to fabricate something.  Elsa is romantic without being sappy.  She talks about art and her husband still embraces her with the skills that he already possesses.  It isn't perfect.  It's a little chaotic, but that's part of the narrative.  

Uncle Yanco (1967) -I always assume that I'm going to be annoyed by Varda's experimental stuff.  It mostly feels put on (trust me, I'm going to be writing a lot about this pretty soon).  But this is that sweet spot.  It comes from the fact that you can feel Varda's appreciation and love for her subject in this one.  The eponymous Uncle Yanco is Scrappy Doo in the best possible way to Agnes Varda's Scooby.  It's insane that both of these are in the same family...even though Yanco makes a point to say that they aren't actually related.  Still, this is a charming short and this is Varda's experimental stuff at its best.​

Black Panthers (1968) -I love when Varda gets out of her own way.  Yeah, I know that we're at the height of Varda's talents.  But I can just feel Varda getting wrapped up in the wealth of actual content that she needs to respect.  It's not like Varda's fingerprints aren't on this.  There are some very Varda elements happening in this documentary.  But the subject matter comes first to her.  There's such a respect for her subject and that's what makes "Black Panthers" compelling.

Reponse de femmes (1975) -See, I found this one more interesting.  It's really that tightrope that Varda rarely pulls off.  This is avant garde as can be, but it also doesn't forget its focus.  It's both a damning condemnation of misogyny coupled with a masterclass in efficient purpose.  Does it get a bit much with all of the nudity?  Yeah, kind of.  But Varda's going for a bit of shock value to get her audience to really listen to her message.  It's pretty incredible.

Plaisir d'amour en Iran (1976) -I both like and dislike this (kind of like the movie its associated with).  In many ways, it's borderline a deleted scene from One Sings, the Other Doesn't.  I will say that I find Apple far more interesting in these six minutes than I did the entire film of One Sings, the Other Doesn't.  It takes a lot to make Apple relatable because she doesn't really hold relationships with anyone who really challenges her.  If anything, her relationship with Suzanne gains weight because we see her in a place and a time that brings down her walls.  Also, the notion that Varda uses Iran as a backdrop so effectively is lovely.

Not rated, but this is a pretty intense R-rated movie.  Let's put most of the nudity to the side.  There is a lot of nudity, but most of it isn't done in the sexual context.  Some of it is, so keep that in mind.  But this is a movie that has really unnecessary underage nudity.  Like Valerie Mariesse, the protagonist, at one point plays a teenager despite being an adult.  That's not what I'm talking about.  I was pretty shocked to see this in a movie.  Also, add to this that the core motif of this film rests on the role of abortion.  Even beyond that, there's an on-screen suicide.  This movie ticks off a lot of parental red flags.  Still, not rated...

DIRECTOR: Agnes Varda

Come on, Varda, what are you doing? I have to come forward with something pretty uncomfortable right off the bat.  As hippie dippie progressive as I am, I kind of have a hard time completely agreeing with the politics of this movie.  My thoughts on abortion are pretty colored by my Catholicism.  I will say that I am probably way more sympathetic than a lot of Catholics when it comes to this story, often sympathizing with the women in these situations.  But this is one of Varda's political films.  If you know me at all, I'm all about making art political.  But it's not going to read well that I disagree with a lot of Varda's politics and am annoyed by the way she makes her political films.  I'm basically dropping a disclaimer saying that my bias might be affecting the way that I view this movie.

One Sings, the Other Doesn't has some of the best moments of Varda coupled with some of the worst moments of Varda.  It's been a minute since I've seen this movie, but I can't help but compare it to Crimes and Misdemeanors.  In Crimes and Misdemeanors (which I'm not even sure that I'm spelling right), Woody Allen (I know!) challenges himself by making half the movie a comedy and half the movie a drama with no bleedover between films.  Varda doesn't take things that far.  Varda, instead, tells the story of two women emotionally bound over an abortion at the inciting incident of the film.  Now, these two women don't see each other a lot.  The connection between these two is locked into the fact that they are exchanging letters informing the other of updates in their respective lives.  The problem is that I really like one of the stories and I can't abide the other story. 

Now, while watching this, I kept thinking that either Varda is playing me or I was supposed to like the entire film, but instead I just didn't care for part of the film.  That title.  Guys.  That title is messing with my head.  The film ends with the title of the film being dropped.  Varda is a smart human being.  When Varda is a genius, she's next level.  But I also --and this is from watching way too many Varda films --understand that sometimes Varda is desperate to maintain that level of genius.  She often hits things with a blunt object and expects people to applaud her.  Half of this movie is brillaint and challenging.  The other half is the Varda stuff I hate.  Because I'm second guessing everything that I just watched, I'm going to proceed with the following assumption that I might be wrong about:

"Agnes Varda made a movie that is kind of brilliant and kind of stupid by accident.  She meant to make a movie that was challenging throughout and instead screwed up on parts." 

It's the title that's making me second guess myself.  But I am going to be talking about the title of the film a lot because I think it has so much to do with how I understood this film.  (Note:  Everything I just wasted digital real estate on is me basically saying that I'm always nervous to question the auteur because I know people are smarter than me out there.)  Now, Varda has a story about one person who is a singer, the other person who isn't.  If we wanted to go literal, the storyis about how Apple is a singer, who lives this charmed bohemian life traveling all over the world, unburdened by parenthood until she embraces it at the time of her choosing.  The other story is about Suzanne, who has a hard life because she was sattled with these kids that bogged her down into a life of burdensome responsibility.  She eventually finds happiness when she embraces the notion that she dosen't have to be a mother 24/7 and can make quasi-selfish choices.  

If Varda made the movie One Sings, the Other Doesn't and literally makes one about a singer, it could be the idea that she's literally pointing out whose life we should be rooting for.  She's using singing as a symbol for how one should live their life supported by art.  Now, I don't agree.  I think Suzanne lives a far richer life.  However, once again I don't get the vibe that's the message that Varda wants me to take away from the movie.  And here comes me being the meanest I'll be on this blog:

"I think that Apple is meant to be an avatar for Varda.  Varda loves experimental political art and hates to be tied down.  Thus, Apple is meant to be Varda." 

If I was being far more fair, I bet that both Suzanna and Apple represent different parts of Varda.  After all, I watched the shorts that were on this disc, and she straight up says that women are far more complex than people give them credit for.  (I love the shorts more than I love the feature length film, in this case. )  But I'm once again --uncomfortably again --pointing out that I think we're meant to pity Suzanne and meant to champion Apple.  The thing is, I can't stand Apple.  I honestly can't.  Part of this, and I again feel mean about it, is that Valerie Mariesse really hurts this role.  It's not her fault altogether.  Therese Liotard as Suzanne is absolutely nailing every shot she's in.  But every scene with Apple almost hurts.  I hate being this way because it makes me feel so ugly and judgmental about the film when I want to look at the film for intent.  

But Apple is also an incredibly problematic character.  I started this whole thing advocating that I was progressive.  What I accidentally deleted was the term "Hippie Dippie."  There are times that I think that I would have flourished during the hippie movement of the '60s and '70s.  I really do.  I watch some of those old movies and wonder if I would have found my people.  (Sure, these people are boomers now, but I'm sure some of them kept the cause.)  But Apple represents a lot of Varda's work.  I unironically see things that Apple is platforming as typical of Varda's political work.  There's nothing subtle about it.  There's nothing all that well crafted.  It's instead borderline terrible.  We're supposed to believe that Apple is really crushing it out there as a musician.  She has all of these street corner performances and people are sitting and infatuated with what she's doing.  Those songs...good golly.  They.  Are.  Terrible.  The thing that That Thing You Do! gets right is that it wrote a fictional bop.  Everything that Apple makes makes me want to throw up.  This is from a guy who wants filmmakers to get more political.  

Instead, her audiences seem to really be taking in what she's singing as if it is really changing their lives.  Like, there's no metaphor.  There's no nuance..  (Okay, there's the simile of being like a bubble, but that even gets questioned.)  My goodness, it made me want to tear my hair out.

Again, I love the Suzanne parts.  It's not even like Suzanne is a flawless character.  I'm genuinely bothered when she gets married to a married man.  She knows that this dude is bad for her and her kids, but she marries him because she's lonely?  While I don't agree with that for a second, it does make her an interesting character.  Not only that, but she has these morals and understandings and still makes mistakes.  It takes years before she gets married to that doctor.  But it was interesting seeing what was up with Suzanne.

​I don't know.  I wish I didn't hate so much of this movie.  It was a rough one for me.  The parts I liked, I really liked. The parts I hated...well, those were awful.

PG-13 for a lot of Star Wars-y violence.  Like, Mando rips through guys, but it's all stuff that I --even as a pacifist! --dismiss pretty easily.  Heck, the more violent it got, the more I cheered.  Maybe The Mandalorian and Grogu highlighted the fact that I'm not a pacifist.  I especially love that the filmmakers found excuses to make the bad guys the Empire, despite the fact that this all takes place after Return of the Jedi. I'm also obliged to point out that Star Wars tends to include quasi-scary monsters, which younger audiences may not care for.  Still, very family-friendly Star Wars.  

DIRECTOR:  Jon Favreau

This is just an excuse to talk about the entire concept of The Mandalorian, right?  Like, we all know that I'm writing about the movie.  But considering that this is a film blog, I don't really have opportunities to talk about the show.  Can I say something completely blasphemous?  I really like the Disney era of Star Wars.  I know!  Like, I haven't been this much of a Star Wars nut since I was really little.  I actually prided myself on being a Star Trek fan (which I still hold arbitrary loyalty to).  But the Disney stuff, for the most part, really got me back on board with being a Star Wars nut.  

I know that there are a handful of people who tuned out then.  Okay, I'll be talking about both.  Because I do have thoughts on The Mandalorian and Grogu and maybe I'll lean harder that way.  After all, The Mandalorian as a TV show is remarkably fun for me, especially as a Kurosawa fan.   But I'm an Andor guy through-and-through.  I'm going to get something unfair out of the way first:  This was a perfect viewing experience.  Sometimes I have to power through some of these blogs trying to set aside that I watched a movie in less-than-ideal conditions.  Quite the opposite here.  I love going to the movies, especially during the summer when it comes to popcorn cinema.  For a long time there, I felt like I wasn't really granted opportunities to get back to an actual movie theater because I just have too many kids.  But now some of those kids are growing up and I desperately want to re-bond with them while they are old.

Cue my twelve-year-old son.  Henry had a Star Wars phase when we used to watch Star Wars: Rebels together when he was a tiny little man.  He got mildly obsessed with Rebels and Rebels alone.  Now, I tried getting him into other Star Wars stuff.  (Again, that Andor is going to be a hard sell for any other member of the family but me.) It's not that they actively dislike Star Wars.  I just noticed that Gen Alpha's (and younger Gen Z's) attention spans are pretty darned rough.  Not to sound like the oldest man in the world, but it's them darned reels.  They can't pay attention to movies.  (You think I'm shaking my cane to the sky.  Students literally told me that watching movies is a burden because they're too long.)   But Henry really wanted to see The Mandalorian and Grogu with me because his cousins said it was funny.  So I went to see a really fun Star Wars movie with my only son and he really had a good time with me, so the movie already seems like a 10.

But I know it isn't a 10.  I'm in a precarious situation.  I liked the movie a lot.  I am going to buy this movie when it hits physical media (again, I'm an old man who shouts at clouds).  I'll probably watch it a few times.  It might even inspire me to do a rewatch of the series.  But I also know that this is a deeply flawed film.  I know that others actively dislike this movie.  I see the way that the trolls on the Internet swarm this movie, relishing that the movie might not be making the box office that Disney product needs to make.  I don't know why they hate the fact that new Star Wars is being made, but that's the way things are playing out.  So the precarious position I'm talking about is the fact that I automatically want to defend this movie because I hate trolls while having to acknowledge that there's something wrong with it.

The best place I can come from when it comes to that is the fact that none of the bad things in this movie are necessarily red flags for me.  There isn't one real dealbreaker in this movie.  The problem that I have is that The Mandalorian and Grogu, appropriately, is just the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated movie, Rotta the Hutt and all.  More accurately, it's a live-action version of The Clone Wars TV show in its prime.  It's not quite movie quality, but it's pretty darned good.  What this all means is that Dave Filoni has his mitts all over this movie.  I like The Clone Wars TV show.  It's a very good show that brought a lot of very good Star Wars stuff to the forefront, especially in light of an era that didn't do much for me.  (Side Note:  I just disparaged trolls about wanting to slag Disney Star Wars, claiming that they shouldn't be complaining that they are getting Star Wars content.  I hated the prequels when they came out.  I still don't like them. But honest-to-Pete, I'm really glad that the Prequels have found their audiences.  I don't agree that they are great, but we got some cool Star Wars stuff out of that era.) 

Both The Clone Wars movie and The Mandalorian and Grogu don't feel like they take any big swings.  I'll go even further when it comes to The Mandalorian and Grogu.  I don't feel like you really need to see the movie to continue with the show.  As a guy who just absorbs way too much media, I'm often confronted by film spinoffs of TV shows that I like.  Often, these movies change the dynamic of the show.  They are incredibly risky and make the show different when we come back.  The best example I can think of is The X-Files: Fight the Future.  That movie was required reading for when The X-Files came back.  I love the movie, Fight the Future.  It felt like it took an obsession of mine and pulled out the stops.  The scope and scale of the film made it feel like you had to see this movie on the big screen.  The downside was, when The X-Files came back as a TV show, the movie had done too much heavy lifting and the show had a hard time finding its voice after that.

With The Mandalorian and Grogu, nothing here really mattered.  This all felt like a bit of a side story for Mando.  The Mandalorian, as a show, has a really big world that its already played with.  We have gotten some really good stories, often ones that affect the characters personally.  There are stakes that really come into play by the time we hit a season finale.  But both Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau really went out of their way to make The Mandalorian and Grogu a story that newcomers to these characters would have no trouble picking up what is going on.  Yeah, we got some name drops (Some real Glubs, if you know what I mean.) We got Rotta the Hutt and Zeb. That's a real Filoni thing.  I don't mind.  But you don't have to know that Rotta the Hutt was in The Clone Wars and Zeb just seems like a sidekick in this movie.  They are almost archetypes rather than real characters.

This is where my most damning commentary falls in.  Listen, I love The Bear.  I think that show is great.  (I even enjoy it despite thinking that it should have ended after two seasons.)  I don't know why it bothers me as much as it does, but Jeremy Allen White is not great in this.  I mean, how could you be great, especially if you are Jeremy Allen White?  A lot of the casting of this is about the name that's trending right now.  But Rotta the Hutt isn't a necessarily great character.  Did I want him to be okay at the end of the movie?  Yeah.  Totally.  I like that he and little Grogu were friends.  That was pretty cute. But the dialogue in the movie for Rotta the Hutt was such a sledgehammer of character exposition.  Yes, you hated your dad.  That doesn't have the be the subject of every conversation that you have in this movie.  And the performance is just really stilted because these lines about family are coming out of a ripped slug.  

And the thing that I hate to write the most out of this whole blog is that I believe that there's someone out there who could have delivered those lines more convincingly.  See, because I never questioned the performance of the actor who played Jabba the Hutt.  Never did.  Jabba was always just Jabba.  Rotta was Jeremy Allen White saying some silly stuff about family.  This is coming from a guy who is invested in the story.  I wanted this to be an excellent performance and I was not impressed.  Jeremy Allen White is an incredible actor. His role as Rotta the Hutt left something to be desired.

So I wish that this was one of the greats.  It's really unfair to the movie because I think that that Star Wars needs to have fun adventures times.  (If my kids read this, tha isn't an Adventure Time reference.) It's slightly unfair that every Star Wars movies needs to have stakes.  From a positive point of view, this movie made me care about the gangster end of Star Wars, something I always found slightly burdensome.  (Okay, I liked Star Wars: Outlaws a lot.) But sometimes I just want a small Star Wars movie.  I had fun with my kid.  I had fun at the movies.  But, yeah, it's imperfect.  And I suppose that's okay.

Rated R for Sam Raimi style gore and violence.  Since I'm dropping the term "gore", you can assume that there's going to be some death.  I'm not saying who is going to die.  I'm not going to even tell you if your two main characters make it through the movie or not.  I'm just saying that people die.  I can tell you some randos die for sure.  Beyond that, watch the movie.  There's also language and some innuendo, but the R is 1000% for Sam Raimi's love for campy gore.

DIRECTOR:  Sam Raimi

Ah, summertime.  When it is super hard to find time to do some basic writing.  I know.  Most people don't feel bad for the teacher who has summers off.  I can even make you feel less sympathy for me immediately.  The school year ended and we went from there right into a mini-vacation.  What that means is that I'm writing Send Help a little stale.  Not too-too bad.  Just more than I normally would allow.  It doesn't matter.  It's not like anybody reads these.  But I'm going to keep the blog up because that's the thing that I do.  I don't give up on anything and that's probably mostly unhealthy.  Whatever.

Sam Raimi and I need to go to couples' counseling together.  We're both Detroit boys.  And by "Detroit Boys", I mean that we both grew up in similar suburbs of Detroit at totally different time periods.  Still, the fact that Sam Raimi was a local video hero of mine means that I show up for a lot of his movies.  Honestly, I like Sam Raimi.  When I found out that he was going to do Multiverse of Madness (a movie that clearly birthed a relationship between him and Rachel McAdams), I lost my mind.  I think that movie is great.  While a lot of people cried "Meh", I was cheering the whole time.  That's what I wanted out of Doctor Strange and I would be thrilled beyond belief if I could keep getting Sam Raimi Marvel beyond his Spider-Man trilogy. 

But Sam Raimi is in a weird place career wise.  I think he's always kind of been an indie kid (Indie Kid?  Detroit Boy?  What kind of mood am I in right now?) who has been mistaken for a big time Hollywood type.  He's more of a name than a director for hire and he carries with him some real auteur vibes.  But he's not exactly a draw for John and Jane Q. Public.  As such, when he has a movie attached to him, some weird stuff is going to happen.  Sam Raimi often tackles these projects that are super fun to watch in the moment, but aren't necessarily going to be movies that stick to the ribs.  Part of that comes from the fact that he lives under his Evil Dead umbrella.  As a consumer of his work, I don't see that as a bad thing.  I even think that Raimi is a fan of his own work, not unlike Kevin Smith's affection for Clerks. I don't know.  He seems like a cool dude.  Still, that's entirely based on the fact that I want to like the guy. 

As an example of the thing that I'm dancing around, I want to compare Send Help to Drag Me to Hell.  The only time that I saw Drag Me to Hell was in theaters.  Do you know what?  At the time, I absolutely dug it. It wasn't Evil Dead.  Raimi, as campy as he still gets, has reeled it in a ton since those movies.  They're still over-the-top, Three Stooges inspired horror movies.  I get that.  But I couldn't tell you one thing about Drag Me to Hell except for the end on the train tracks.  I know that's going to be me and Send Help.  I'm not even talking about the distant future.  I'm talking about borderline next week.  I'm going to remember a handful of really gratuitous scenes.  If I'm lucky, I'll remember the twist that was telegraphed (I got most of it, not exactly it).  Maybe the ending will stick with me.  But that's what I'm talking about.

Modern Sam Raimi is a guy waiting to do the crazy crap that no one else wants to do.  While I watch movies, I often try to think of how I'm going to write about what I'm watching.  The immediate takeaway is that it is Misery on an island.  (I was going to say Lord of the Flies, but that can go too many ways.) There are a handful of scenes that cement Send Help as a Sam Raimi film.  The plane crash, the hunting of the boar, the intense fight between the two of the main characters, and a handful of cheesy lines that Linda drops all make the film Sam Raimi.  Now, old Sam Raimi would often make entire movies out of the scenes I just mentioned.Like, if you watch Evil Dead II, that movie is frenetic.  He's just embracing everything that a campy horror director would love to dole out.  Heck, he inspired entire generations of campy horror directors.  But now, I feel like he has to play nice between parts of gore that he's waiting to subject you to.

This is probably a sign of maturity.  I mean, as much as I like Evil Dead and the projects that it spawned, those movies are what they are.  Other movies shouldn't be Sam Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy.   They are their own thing and we don't need people coming back to the same well over and over. (Golly, now I feel bad for lumping Sam Raimi in with Kevin Smith because I've accused Kevin Smith of returning to the same wells.)  I do think that Raimi has fun making these movies.  I bet you he doesn't care that the story is kind of so-so because he's having fun making the kind of movie that gets released in cinemas across the world.  Heck, Send Help was the example I gave of people coming out to go see movies.  It did halfway decent at the box office, so who am I to lament that it was kind of forgettable, shy of a few really fun moments.

It's also well directed at times, despite the fact that I seem to be judging it pretty harshly.  Raimi balances a lot of visual motifs in the film, mostly centered aroud mundane objects.  I wish I wrote this fresh because I made a tally of all of the visual callbacks that Raimi makes in the film.  There are the flowers on the cliff (did the rock repair itself?), the engagement ring, Linda's shoes, the knife.  I know that there were more, but it's 12:35 in the morning and I just drove back from Chicago.  I really wanted to get this out while there were no kids asking me to make them food.  Still, those visual callbacks are really nice.  Are they sometimes a bit heavy-handed?  Sure.  But I wish that I could show my film class Send Help just to explain how mundane objects gain a lot of meaning when the director imbues the film with meaning.

Golly, Raimi has to do some pretty screwed up things to get an enemy out of this movie.  Maybe one of my biggest frustrations is the fact that the movie wants us to root for the bad guy.  (HOLD ON!  LET ME FINISH!)  Preston is a monster.  One of the lines that the film drops is that "Monsters aren't born. They're made."  As the film progresses, Raimi manipulates tropes to get you to really hate Preston.  If the trope of the film is that these two are going to learn to depend on each other only to have that idea subverted, Raimi gets a bit of a laugh by tricking us with the same ideas time and again.  Preston is beyond redemption.  The film makes him a butthead, softens him, and then has him betray Linda.  That's fine.  A lot of movies would play that card.  But Send Help pulls that crap multiple times, making it so you have to wonder what Linda is going to do with this guy.  I mean, Raimi embraces his anti-CEO corporate bro messaging pretty hard.  It seems like the film is about empowering this woman.

But Linda is also a monster.  Now, I'm heavily backpedaling because I'm mostly on Team Linda for the film.  I think we're supposed to be.  I expect films to give their protagonists character flaws.  Early in the film, Linda has the opportunity to signal for help.  It creates just the right amount of stakes.  The boat is far away and moving fast.  If Linda really tried to signal that boat, there was only a small chance that she could actually get seen and helped.  Raimi teases that this moment is going to be the damnation of Linda.  We were supposed to have this dramatic irony moment when Preston was going to find out that Linda could have gotten them rescued and didn't.  That keeps Linda as the sympathetic protagonist.  

But that's nothing.  The ending reveal, including the sacrificing of Linda's own morals when it comes to Zuri and the boat captain, make Linda  a full-on bad guy.  It's such an aggressive choice and...I don't know if I like it.  Sure, it's fun to see Annie Wilkes in Misery do her thing.  But I also sometimes just want to see Linda get appropriate comeuppance stopping Preston from his mania.  Instead, Preston has a moment of sympathy and that...bums me out.  Like, that dude deserves no sympathy.  And Linda absolutely took it too far.  Still, there is something incredibly cathartic about seeing Linda get away with it all.  Sometimes, that's the bigger win than good triumphing over evil.  At least that's true in cinema.

It's a good time.  Yeah, I wish it was a bit more memorable.  But for what it was, I enjoyed it.

Rated R for nudity, especially in a sexual context, and child abuse.  I keep thinking that I want to watch Fanny and Alexander with my family because I'm such a big fan of it and I relate to the movie so much.  Then I remember that Bergman --being kind of a perv himself --added a character who sleeps around and wants to show that kind of stuff.  Also, Alexander, who is a child, copes with his father's death and any kind of hardship by whispering curse words in succession.  Yeah, this one is probably deservedly R.

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

​Okay, let's do this one more time.  I've written about Fanny and Alexander a whole bunch of times.  You can find my commentary about the television cut on this very blog.  But I am also fairly confident that I posted about this movie on Flixster back when they used to have a movie review section.  I love this movie.  But because I tend to lean into "director's visions" (which ultimately may not be the case here, I don't know!), I tend to only watch the longer cuts of things.  Now, to avoid dancing around a subject, I do have to admit that I like the longer cut a lot better.  I'm going to be griping about the theatrical cut a bit in this.  But even with the time cut off of this movie, Fanny and Alexander is still the best Bergman movie.

Let's complain for a bit because I'm in a grumpy mood.  (I really thought that I would get Teacher of the Year this year and I didn't.  I had a rough year and I put myself on the line a lot.  Still, a friend of mine got it and I am paradoxically happy for him while still self-loathing.)  Fanny and Alexander is what I want out of Bergman all of the time.  When I watched the television version, even though the story is remarkably small, it has this epic, Doctor Zhivago element to the whole thing.  We exist in the world of the Ekdahls through and through.  The first act --which is surprisingly mostly intact in the television version --gives us incredible access to this family.  We see what they look like when they are happy.  It's the Shire elements of The Lord of the Rings.  We have to understand what these characters have to lose before the rug is pulled out from under them.  We see their petty little differences.  We see what they prioritize.  For an exposition, the beginning does a lot of heavy lifting.  Watching this as part of a three hour movie, it was shocking to see that the first third of the movie (for the non-math people in the room: 1 hour) was completely devoted to the exposition.  The inciting incident, Alexander's father collapsing on stage, doesn't happen for a full hour.  That's insane.  

What it does for us is gives us investment in the death of Oskar.  Now, when the film is longer, that exposition makes a bit more sense.  Again, The Lord of the Rings is also incredibly long.  We can afford a few minutes of cinematic real estate to see what life is like before the problem.  But Bergman does some things in that first act that play out in the rest of the film when it comes to the television version that doesn't happen in the theatrical cut.

The theatrical cut focuses a lot more of the time on the eponymous Fanny and (especially) Alexander while they have been separated from their family.  When they are stuck with the bishop, we still have the great understanding of the cruelty of this theocratic dictator that the television version shares.  But what is missing is the damage that the disappearance of Fanny and Alexander have on the Ekdahls.  In the television cut, the time with the bishop seems far longer than what we see in the television version.  While Bergman seems to have kept the Fanny and Alexander parts of the story, removing the Ekdahls does two things to the story.  The first part is that we don't see the respective members of the Ekdahl family getting over their own crap.  Carl and Gustav have really terrible flaws that are highlighted in the first act before Oskar collapses.  Carl spends money and treats his wife terrbly and Gustav is a filanderer (once again, Bergman?  We get it.)

Yet, in the television cut, these two demonstrate their own respective humanities when it comes to these two children suffering under the bishop.  These two are kind of the heroes of the story.  Yes, it is Isak who finally gets the two kids out.  But because we only see Isak's attempt to get the kids out and he makes it seem easy.  Also, when Isak takes the kids out, using illusions to do so, it almost lends a vibe of the impossible.  It makes an act of God the first and only attempt to help out, making the children's strife something almost simple.  When there is no challenge happening with these children, it makes the conflict seem somewhat nerfed.  Now, if I had to be honest with myself, I only know this because I love the television version so much.  But when you have Gustav and Carl put all of their crap aside for the sake of the greater good, it makes the entire thing feel far more dire than what we're seeing in the theatrical cut.  

Now, when I write these blogs, especially when the movie is a different version of the same movie, I tend not to read previous blogs.  I'd love to say it's because I want to approach every blog with a fresh eye, untarnished by whatever I thought in the past.  But the reality is that nobody has time for that and I'm a pretty overwhelmed personality by design.  Still, I do want to talk about some things that I have to guess that I talked about before.  I'm a dead dad kid.  I've written some version of that in lots of other blog entries.  I'm the victim of losing my dad at a young age.  When a movie touches on similar plotlines, I tend to be a little more of a sap than your average viewer.  The thing about Fanny and Alexander is that too many beats align with my life.

I could read this as Bergman having insight into mortality and loss.  I mean, that's the most likely answer.  Bergman is Bergman.  He's no slouch.  I may not be the biggest Bergman guy in the world, but I've never pretended that the man wasn't a genius.  Like when Emilie Ekdahl speedruns her way into another marriage because she can't stand being an unmarried mother for two seconds, yeah, I went through the same thing.  And my stepfather also didn't care for me. So can I stay in any way objective about the value of this story?  I don't know.  It's a bit much when I feel like this movie is about me, which is entirely self-centered.  I feel like, in order to write anything of substance, I have to comment on things that didn't relate to me.

I suppose that means that I should write a few words about the Ishmael Ratzinsky stuff.  Now, Alexander is the perfect age for looking at the world in the way that he does.  He's a little too old to act the way he does, which, ironically is what makes it perfect.  There's an expectation placed upon Alexander to process all of this garbage in a mature way.  But Alexander is in this liminal place where he can both absorb the reality of what is happening around him and also have a need to tie the world around him into the spiritual / supernatural.  (Fun fact: I was convinced of a bunch of supernatural things involving my dead father in the years that followed his passing.  This stuff all rang true when watching the film.)   But the Ishmael Ratzinsky stuff?  Man, I have a hard time wrapping my head around it.

Fanny and Alexander always dances a little bit in a bigger world than the grounded stuff we can easily process.  Using Hamlet as an allusion is smart.  Yeah, the easy read on the whole thing is an angry young man angry at his mother for remarrying a tyrant.  But Oskar, when he collapses, is playing the ghost of Hamlet's father.  The fact that Alexander interacts with his father's spirit for the rest of the film (including the father that abused him) reminds us that "there is more in heaven and Earth" than the completely understandable.  That night, when he explores Isak's home, is almost a trip to Neverland.  I can't help but view Ishamel as androgynous, someone akin to David Bowie.  I struggle with this scene a lot, until the guardian angel confession.  Maybe it is a cop out for some viewers, but I find that guardian angel thing comforting.

Bergman has an interesting relationship with religion.  Alexander's father's death is a formative moment for Alexander.  Alexander finds himself not disbelieving the existence of God, but questioning why this God who abandoned him could be so cruel. When he has a very uncomfortable time with someone claiming to be guardian angel, it's forcing the issue to a head.  And it's not something that has a clear answer.  Bergman would probably disagree with that read. But Alexander's faith is not dictated by Vergerus.  Instead, it exists as something else.  It's interesting.

Still, I would always take the television cut of this movie.  It's still very good, but it also reads as wildly unbalanced compared to the television version. 

Rated PG.  WAIT, what?!  No.  This movie isn't rated PG.  There's no way that this movie is rated PG.  Like, even a little bit.  Yeah, the movie is long and there's a lot of PG content in this movie.  But this movie is a straight-up R in my head.  I don't care if it's 1975.  There's a scene of Barry with two topless ladies having his way with them.  There's a weird sexual undertone to a lot of the movie.  One of the main plot points is Barry's adultery and predisposition to child abuse.  What a hot take.  PG?  PG!

DIRECTOR:  Stanley Kubrick

I am still shaken to my core to discover that this movie is PG.  Like, for a minute, I thought that this might be a PG film.  After all, it's all old-timey.  Old-timey movies get a bit of a pass from the MPAA.  But then there's the scene towards the beginning of Act II and I was just like, "Nah, this is an R-rated movie and I hope my kids don't walk in on me watching this movie."  Like, all of the themes and motifs are more mature in nature.  It's a Stanley Kubrick movie, for goodness' sake.  Heck, I couldn't imagine showing children this movie.  I would even have a hard time giving this movie a PG-13 rating, even knowing that PG-13 didn't exist when this movie was made.

Barry Lyndon was always the gaping hole in my movie knowledge.  I teach elements of Barry Lyndon when I'm talking about light in film.  I may be saying the obvious to some people, but I always use opportunities to teach in productive way.  Barry Lyndon was shot (as far as I understand) with natural light.  It's something that isn't really done in cinema.  To capture that cinematic feel, almost every movie blasts incredibly powerful lights from many directions to blow out shadows and create a heightened experience.  Also, film is infamously finnicky.  Often, natural light can be quite detrimental to how a film looks.  After all, look at every project that a high schooler has turned in and you get the dangers of relying on natural light.  But in the hand of an auteur coupled with an incredible cinematographer, natural light can actually be one of the most gorgeous experiences while filming.  Let's pretend that Kubrick couldn't tell a story. (He, beyond a doubt, can and has done so in Barry Lyndon.  This is a hypothetical.)  Why I teach Barry Lyndon in my film class is that Barry Lyndon is possibly one of the most gorgeous looking movies of all time.  I'm pretty sure that it is was Kubrick's mission statement to make every cel of this movie a Renaissance-era painting.  A lot of that is the lighting coupled with the mise-en-scene.  Kubrick scouted the crap out of his locations.  He made sure that everything was exactly the way he wanted it to be.  Then, he lit it with natural light.

Natural light is a bear to work with.  It is wildly inconsistent.  The very existence of clouds are a bane on the director who wants to work with natural light.  One of Kubrick's biggest cinema sins (besides the fact that apparently he was cruel to his actresses) was that he was a director who wanted a million freaking takes for everything.  With natural light, that is seemingly a masochistic task.  An editor looks at all of the takes and has to not only pick from the best performances, but the one where the light looks the best.  The sexy appeal of artificial light is that it is always going to look the same.  Once a set is lit artifiically, it takes a large consideration off the board.  Geez, the nightmare that this movie must have been to film. 

And that's just for the outdoor stuff.  A not-nothing percentage of the film takes place indoors in these amazing castles / chateaus.  Natural light, in many cases (besides when he reflected the sun into large windows) involves candles.  There are scenes that are entirely lit by candlelight.  Do you know how many candles that invovles?  There are scenes where there are a hilarious amount of candles in the scene.  Again, couple this with the fact that Kubrick was the dictator of a billion takes.  Those candles are constantly melting down.  (As, too, was the director.)  I can't stress enough: the reason that there were a million candles was because it is nearly impossible to light a scene with candlelight.  Luckily, for the sake of cool aesthetics, a billion candles look awesome.  It just seems like this exercise in frustration.

(Fun fact:  I took a break right here because I ran out of time writing.  I have to confess that my headspace is not the same, so I apologize for the change of tone.)  I need to stop talking about Kubrick and his insanity for a minute.  There is something insane that I have to talk about that is going to make me question any blog that I've ever written.  Am I the only one who found the first half of this movie pretty darned funny?  I'm watching this movie and I was surprised by how cheeky the film was.  Now, I'm watching what I think is a comedy and I have the epiphany that I should look up whether or not this movie is a comedy or not.  After all, I didn't think it was supposed to be a comedy.  Lo and behold!  It is labeled on Wikipedia as a historical drama.  Now, given the fact that Act II is significantly more morose than the first half, I suppose that there might be some logic to that.  It's not like the tone of the second half changed.  If anything, the genre seemed to change while maintaining the tone.  But I'm watching this movie and I'm watching the story of a commoner and his constant upwards failure and I find it very funny.

Okay, not very funny.  I'm doing that thing where I exhale out of my nose a little harder than normal.  It's funny in the same way that Pride & Prejudice is funny.  Okay, a little more than that. But Kubrick made this story about an incredibly unlikable protagonist and kept it going for a fairly long runtime.  Like, we're never really supposed to be onboard Redmond Barry's quest for satisfaction.  The movie starts with a slightly erotic game and then, like a petulant child, he possesses his cousin to an uncomfortable level.  One of the things that tends to happen in movies with an unlikable protagonist is that they have to make everyone kind of terrible.  This is a movie full of kind of terrible human beings being kind of terrible to each other.  The only reason that we're behind Redmond Barry is that the camera is on him for the majority of the movie, the narrator is talking about him, and that people are treating him kind of terribly --which tends to excuse a moderate amount of his behavior.  But ultimately, Redmond Barry sucks.  Like, it's really odd that I'm excited for him to escape the British army --despite the fact that we can rally behind his pugilism --because he is a deserter.  But the reason that we tend to excuse something that is really considered rather cowardly is because he wouldn't have to be in the army if it wasn't for the fact that he was part of a small conspiracy to trick him into committing a murder that didn't happen.

If you see the movie, that sentence makes sense.

But I find the movie genuinely light for something that is supposed to be quite dark.  Okay,  I find the first half light.  But that second half is brutal.  The thing about it is, I feel like Kubrick (intentionally!) takes Redmond Barry and turns him into Barry Lyndon, a despicable human being.  If Redmond Barry, young Irish scallywag, is kind of charming in his tomfoolery, Barry Lyndon sucks.  Like, Lord Bullingdon is worse...but it's because of how bad Barry Lyndon treats him.  (For the sake of making a decision, from here on out, I'm referring to the evil, more serious Redmond Barry as Barry Lyndon.)  Redmond Barry, when he steals away Honoria Lyndon from her husband, is oddly charming --despite the fact that I'm very anti-adultery even in movies.  But he immediately starts cheating on her.  Actually, we can probably chart when Redmond becomes unlikable by the fact that there is no strife for him to work through.  We can rally behind Redmond because, as much as he's partially the cause of his own strife, he has outside forces oppressing him.  When he's Barry Lyndon, there is no opposition.  When he does bad things then, he's just a punk.  When he becomes a cad, golly, we're just begging for him to get his comeuppance.  (Maybe Barry Lyndon is forcing me to use a lot of this dated parlance.) 

Yet, Lord Bullington might be the proof against my argument.  Bullington has every right to hate Barry.  As much as I should bond with him because we both didn't get along with our stepfathers, Bullington seems to lack any sympathy in the movie because he's just through-and-through awful.  Yes, Barry hits him.  Yes, Bullington misses his biological father.  But throughout the story, Bullington just becomes more and more awful.  He becomes the full-on villain of the piece, not just in a way that ties the story together.  His climax --from his perspective --is shooting Barry.  However, there's a lot going on in that duel scene that is fun to unpack.  

From Barry's perspective, he's making the quasi-honorable choice for the first time in his life.  His son has died.  His wife hates him.  I get the vibe that he's thinking about someone else for a change: his wife.  His wife has already lost two children --one from death and the other from exile.  To kill the exiled child is just an exercise in torture of someone who is already suicidal.  I also think that there's something truly pathetic about Bullington having this whole duel to begin with.  It's a parallel to Redmond's childish duel at the beginning.  The large difference between the two scenes is that the instigator of the respective duels acts differently in both scenarios.  When Redmond duels with Captain Quin, Quin is shaking (despite never really being in danger).  In the second duel, it is Bullington who is tripping over himself.  When Barry shoots into the ground, he's doign the honorable thing.

It's the fact that Bullington's perspective makes Bullington the most unlikable character in the film.  Bullington knew that there was a chance that Barry would get the first shot.  He's so confident that Barry was going to die in round one that, when his shot discharged by accident, you see this pathetic little child trying to muster the courage to face death honorably and failing.  The fact that Barry gives him an out and Bullington still proceeds to maim Barry gives us an ending that is somehow bittersweet.  Barry wins by not being the worst character in the story.  That's a low bar to cross, but it is ultimately what we're left with.  He survives on an insulting salary and probably dies depressed. 

But at least he's not Bullington.

Man, I kind of dig this movie.  Yeah, it goes a little long.  And my biggest complaint about the movie (and I hate doing this) is Ryan O'Neal.  Golly, I know that Kubrick knew what he was doing.  But O'Neal's performance really sticks out in this film.  Everything seems nuanced except for O'Neal, who seems to be doing an American accent in exchange of Irish.  Except occasionallly.  Sometimes it sounds like he's trying to pull off an accent.  Still, what a choice.  I wonder if Kubrick was playing the long con on O'Neal, but I did not care for that. 

Still, the movie is a masterpiece.  It'll never hit my favorite Kubricks.  But gosh darned it if it wasn't impressive.

PG-13 almost exclusively for language.  It's not like there's a-lot-a-lot of language, but it's definitely not nothing.  (This is some top tier writing, guys.)  I'm pretty sure that I heard an f-bomb in there somewhere.  Because Christopher Nolan isn't exactly tailoring his films for younger audiences, it feels like this is a more rebellious movie than it is.  It's sense of scope is daunting and it's definitely anxiety inducing.  There's even a little bit of scuffle and death in the movie.  (Technically, there's a lot of death, but it's all off-screen.)  Still, PG-13 is probably the right call for this one.

DIRECTOR:  Christopher Nolan

I can't believe that I don't have a blog on Interstellar.  2014 was the year before I started this class, so it feels like this movie is new enough to be on this blog.  But I can safely say that I haven't seen this movie in twelve years.  And here's the thing, I have talked about this movie with borderline every film class ad nauseum.  Not because I brought it up.  Heck, no.  This is one of those situations where kids discover the movie and then that's the movie that is passed around the class.  

And I'll tell you what:  For a second (FOR A SECOND!) I thought my opinion on this movie was going to change.  The first time I watched it, I remember being thoroughly in awe of the scope of this film only to be disappointed by the end.  That's exactly how I feel now.  That's not being dismissive.  When I use the word "awe", I honestly mean "awe."  The lion's share of this movie is one of the most impressive feats of cinema that the 21st Century has produced.  Between the visuals, the characters, the themes, the imagery, the plot...it's all right there.  It's something to behold.  But the end?  Man, I really think that this movie doesn't stick the end.

And it's not that the end is bad.  It's just the weakest element in an incredible presentation.  I have to tell you, I was prepped to be a little bored.  I was watching this movie and I know that it kind of reeks of anticlimax.  (Again, not holding anything against anyone who loves the ending of this movie.  It's not for me.  I'll probably end up writing a thousand words on why the ending is meh.)  But I'm watching this movie and I'm thinking, "Was I wrong about this film?"  Like, there are threads that tease the end.  That's great.  I love that.  Then all of the emotional character stuff.  The stuff between Coop and Murph on Earth (heh, rhyme) is so intense.  Sure, I think "Why not take your kids to space?"  In my reality, it's safer on Earth.  But from an Interstellar perspective, it seems like space is the right call.  As likely to die here than there.)  Then there's the intense tension between Coop and Brand.  I mean, that's a whole movie in itself.  To pile on the fact that Coop and Brand have this deep respect for each other makes that conflict all the more palpable is something else I have to account for.  On top of that (!), we have the fact that Brand is almost a psychopath who had to make this unimaginable choice to let everyone on Earth die and the fact that he manipulated Coop to take off to the stars, knowing that Coop had no scenario that he'd ever see his kids again.  That's incredible.  To top it all off, I forgot that Matt Damon was in this movie.  (I mean, he's even almost got a nod to The Martian going with his spacesuit.) 

Then there was the scene that destroyed me.  Realize that I'm showing this to a class.  We had to watch in forty-five minute chunks.  There was one of those 45 minute chunks that was so painful.  I'm talking about the part where Coop and Brand get off the planet (and Brand is more than a little responsible for the death of their crewmate) and they have to confront the astronaut who lost 27 years.  On top of that (I KEEP HAVING TO WRITE THAT PHRASE AND IT IS FLIPPING KILLING ME AS AN ENGLISH TEACHER!) Coop gets a glut of messages from his now adult children and he witnesses the tragedy and fallout of his leaving.  I mean, this is all incredible stuff.  It's so good.  I was so overwhelmingly invested that I questioned my entire take on this movie.  If all of these beats are as solid as I felt that they were, I had to be wrong about the ending, right?

Reminder: the ending is not an abomination.  It's just the weakest element of this film.  There's a lot of balls in the air in this movie.  Nevermind, we're changing it to plates.  Nolan has too many plates spinning and it is wildly impressive.  The finale of the film is meant to tie-up more than its fair share of threads.  So the end of the movie is meant to give an answer to Murph's ghosts.  Murph's ghosts are a choice.  They are a heck of a choice.  While most of the real raw stuff in the film is character based, Murph's ghosts are a plot beat tied to character drama.  It's a very risky puzzle box that needs to have a top tier answer.  Because Interstellar has so many plates in the air, I'm sure Nolan became aware that there is no way to end this story in a way that matches the scope of the other beats.  He's also a litlte bit of a magician, very much in vibe of M. Night Shyamalan.  He's a guy who cut his teeth on the twist ending.  He's the Memento guy.  I will say that he's normally very good at pulling the rug out from under us, to introduce yet another mixed metaphor.  But the scope of this film almost demanded that the film had to have a moment of unpacking.  Nolan loves what he loves.  He loves time and manipulating what we're seeing.  I, too, love time.  I love messing with time.  I love time travel.  Nolan and I tend to be copacetic on wanting to talk about time.  But his love of time also makes me more critical of conventions that don't really work.  I think that the end of Interstellar is almost the seed that ended up messing up Tenet.  

See, Murphy's ghosts almost don't make sense.  Murph, in the first act, begs her dad to stay on Earth.  That's a character beat that is important.  Her pleas go beyond just a child trying to hold onto her dad.  Literally, the universe (or, in this case, ghosts) are demanding that Coop stays with Murph on Earth.  (It will never not make me giggle.) There needed to be something outside selfishness that makes Coop sin.  In some ways, it's God.  (For the sake of shorthand, I'm just going to talk about the fifth-dimensional beings from this point.)  The third act shows that Coop made a mistake by leaving his family and he tries --in a very stupid way --to undo it.  Nolan is introducing the notion of the closed loop.  Whatever Coop does, it's going to be what he's always done.  When he realizes how he's going to communicate with Murph, he writes the phrase "Stay", realizing that Murph once identified the lines in the gravity and dust as binary code / morse code.  (He says "Morse" at the end, for some reason.)  He remembers to do that because he knows that Murph will figure out what the ghost is trying to say.  But for some reason, he doesn't remember that the phrase "Stay" doesn't cause him to stay.  It's a weird thing that he remembers Murph's ability to understand the ghost, but not the fact that Coop doesn't stay when commanded to.  

In a thematic attempt to tie the whole thing together, implying that Coop is the product of fate, not will, we discover that the fifth-dimensional beings is humanity in a late stage of evolution.  Coop is the product of a Bootstrap Paradox (sorry, Lauren.  I will always point out a Bootstrap Paradox when I can).  Because Coop was fated to save humanity by interacting with the fifth-dimensional beings, the fifth-dimensional beings pulled him to this point in time.  The second problem I have with this is the fact that the fifth-dimensional beings...are kind of an afterthought.  This is not a story of fifth-dimensional beings.  There's a throwaway line about the potentiality of some creatures inside this black hole.  It's not quite a Chekhov's gun.  The camera isn't lingering on the gun.  The camera is panning quickly past a gun and we're asked to invest in something that is intentionally hidden.  Nolan doesn't want us unpacking the fifth-dimensional beings until we're actually interacting with them.   

Also, the movie plays really fast and loose with the stakes of this movie.  Why doesn't Coop die in a black hole?  Because these magic fifth-dimensional beings meant him to survive.  It feels all a bit "plot-armory".  He survives because the movie needs him to survive.  Fate says he can't die so he doesn't die.  How did humanity find him?  The fifth-dimensional beings let humanity know where to find him. There's almost a silly conceit that these all powerful gods / fifth dimensional beings needed Coop to just exist when it seems like they could have handled all of this misery on their own.  Coop seems both super important and arbitrary at the same time.  (Also, does Coop do a lot of math from the inside of a black hole because that second hand on the watch gave a lot of data.

The thing is, in a lesser movie, I could accept a lot of the end.  It just feels like the bulk of the film feels so crafted and so detailed that the end seems more like an emotional resolution, but not a tonal resolution.  It doesn't make the movie bad.  It just makes the movie flawed.  So much of this is so good so that when the end doesn't quite live up, I get bummed.  Do I respect when people make this their favorite movie?  Absolutely.  Is it ever going to make my list?  Nope.  That end keeps on leaving me a little let down. 

And there's my thousand words about the end of this film.