Paths of Glory (1957)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Paths of Glory (1957) – S. Kubrick

The film somehow feels like a blend between a Kirk Douglas personal project (with its leftist anti-war sentiment and crusading role for Kirk) and a Kubrick film (with its intensely art-directed shots and set-ups). It also switches between grubby WWI trenches where soldiers get shell-shocked and the posh Versailles-like palace where the generals talk.  The plot takes the form of a classic morality play (and could have been scripted for the stage, except for the graphic realism on the battlefield) but, unlike in those works that feature heavy moral choices that create extreme tension, the right way to act is clear here.  The generals are wrong in their decisions to:  a) order the regiment to leave the trenches to try to take an impossible-to-take German position; b) hold a court-martial to try three “randomly selected” men for cowardice in the face of the enemy; c) offer no mercy when the pre-ordained verdict is death.  Kirk is both the commanding officer immediately beneath the most unfair general and the self-appointed defense attorney for the men.  He fights in vain against a wayward and biased system that shines a light on just how absurd and brutal warfare is (especially in that it allows some to pursue selfish aggrandizement at the expense of others).  One could argue that the absurdity has even been magnified and increased in these days of drone-attacks and high-tech combat.  Bottom line:  war is sickening. 

The Departed (2006)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Departed (2006) – M. Scorsese

The last time I watched Scorsese’s remake of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs (2002), it was pretty soon after I’d seen the original, which is also great.  In fact, at the time, I felt the HK film was stronger.  But now, at a greater distance, I can see how Scorsese has made this gritty undercover cops-and-robbers drama his own (perhaps it is those Catholic church references).  Although not perfect and sometimes over-indulgent, the film is never less than engaging.  Matt Damon is loathsome as the rat inside the police and Leonardo is suitably wary as the cop inside the gang.  Jack Nicholson plays the crime boss with his usual grand relish.  Marky Mark Wahlberg has a showy bit part as a foul-mouthed staff sergeant and Alec Baldwin and Martin Sheen are always good value.  Vera Farmiga handles a tricky role as the psychologist girlfriend well.  There are a number of twists and surprises.  I haven’t seen all of Scorsese’s more recent films but his use of music here is almost cliché (for him) – we hear the Rolling Stones prominently.  But I recall that he intended this to be a b-picture (which is what he said about Shutter Island too), so perhaps he is excused.  In fact, the film doesn’t have much to say but as an A version of a genre piece, it is pretty fun. 

   

  

The Dead Zone (1983)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Dead Zone (1983) – D. Cronenberg

Put any other actor in the lead role and this becomes just another failed Stephen King adaptation – but Christopher Walken takes it to another level.  Partly, it’s his weird inflections but he also lets us feel the character’s sorrow and pain when his life gets irreparably damaged by, first, a five-year coma, and second, the manifestation of psychic premonitions that allow him to see a person’s future when he holds his or her hand.  I’ve never read the novel, but this is a great set-up for spooky horror.  However, in the hands of David Cronenberg, the film veers straight into mainstream territory, quite unlike the sick strangeness of his earlier films.  So, it’s a mixed bag but somehow I keep coming back to it.  Perhaps that early ‘80’s New England setting creates some subterranean compulsion?  Or quite possibly it’s all due to Walken, not yet a caricature of himself, but naturalistically unusual…and ready to kill Hitler for us, if it comes to that.

  

Baraka (1992)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Baraka (1992) – R. Fricke

Ron Fricke was the cinematographer for the classic photography film, Koyaanisqatsi (1982), directed by Godfrey Reggio.  That earlier film had no plot but the theme of a “world out of balance” was clear and the music by Philip Glass was memorable and now immediately recognizable.  Although Reggio followed up with two additional qatsi films, Fricke was not involved.  Baraka was Fricke’s own “sequel” to the earlier work, although Baraka’s theme (or themes) is much less obvious.  Instead, this film (and the subsequent Samsara from 2011) is all about the images – and they are gorgeous, especially in this remastered blu-ray version.  However, without a clear indication of where each sequence was shot – and the images come from 24 different countries on 6 continents – viewers are left to speculate.  Therefore, we simply talked aloud to the movie (and each other) about the locations and the possible connections between sequences (cutting from a battery hen farm to Japanese commuters squashed into a train makes some kind of statement, I guess).  The music is a bit less compelling than that of Philip Glass but occasionally rises to the occasion.  All told, Baraka gives you a chance to be fully amazed by the wonders of this world and the varied people in it – circa the early nineties.  As such, we sometimes reflected upon whether all these wondrous things are still with us twenty-something years later.

Treasure of the Sierre Madre (1948)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Treasure of the Sierre Madre (1948) – J. Huston

Badges!  We don’t need to show you no stinking badges!  These are the immortal words spoken by a Mexican bandit upon discovering Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt, and Walter Huston squatting on a solid vein of gold and hoping to remake their destitute lives with a tidy profit.  But bandits are only one of their problems; greed and mistrust are the major obstacles to their success.  Bogie is ugly as Fred C. Dobbs who is most crippled by the paranoia that descends as their fortunes increase.  But Walter Huston (father of the director and a star in his own right) really steals the show as the wise old prospector who knows all the tricks of the trade and has his head screwed on straight.  The fact that he can relish the absurdity of the movie’s ending with a hearty laugh endears him to us even more.  Huston (the son) shot the film on location in Mexico and you can tell; he also makes a cameo early in the picture when Bogie hits him up for some loose change in Tampico.  The new blu-ray version I watched felt weirdly clean and detailed for a film this old – like you are there – in sun-baked black and white.  A classic that never gets old (and reminds you that the pursuit of wealth at the expense of your relationships is bound to be folly).

Lonesome (1928)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Lonesome (1928) – P. Fejos

Paul Fejos shot this film in the silent mode but then it was refashioned: first, with sound effects and music, and then, with three short scenes with actual sound dialogue (thus it is a “part-talkie”).  Two lonely people meet at Coney Island on the 4^th of July weekend and enjoy a whirlwind day out.  Fejos uses superimposition very liberally, both to depict what people are thinking but also just to show concurrent events (and he even overlays a clock to show us that time is passing).  Although the early scenes (with the clock) are all drudgery and lonesomeness, once we reach the beach, we are treated to hand-tinting and some beautiful compositions.  “Always” by Irving Berlin plays an important role on the soundtrack and in the “twist” ending to the film.  Of course, the twist in question is fully telegraphed – when the two young people become separated (and they don’t even know each other’s last names), we know they will be reunited – but we just don’t know how or when.  A delight!

The Mortal Storm (1940)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Mortal Storm (1940) – F. Borzage

Perhaps this film is all the more unsettling because, despite its blistering attack on the authoritarianism of Hitler’s government, no one in Hollywood could yet know the magnitude of the evil being enacted and/or contemplated in Nazi Germany at that point. Now 75 years later, at a “safe” distance, a viewer is forced to contemplate “could it happen again?”  It does seem unlikely…but politicians who espouse keeping Muslims out of their countries or locking refugees up in detention centres for unspecified periods of time seem to be moving us closer to that alternate reality.  But back in 1940, Jimmy Stewart is prepared to stand up to the other young people who have fallen in with Hitler (including Roberts Young and Stack), because he wants to be free to think what he wants.  He is in love with Margaret Sullavan who is the daughter of a famous (presumably Jewish) professor (played by Frank Morgan) who is arrested for teaching that the blood of people from all races is chemically and biologically identical.  Although the Nazi sympathizers are portrayed extremely negatively, this is less a political treatise and more a story of thwarted romance, as Stewart’s love for Sullavan is complicated when the authorities force him to flee the country but then prevent her from doing so.  A daring escape becomes the only way out.  If only they knew then that Austria would not be far enough away. 

  

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Virgin Suicides (1999) – S. Coppola

Sofia Coppola was born in ’71, so it isn’t plausible that she has genuine memories of 1974 when this film takes place.  I’m not sure I do either.  But the music from this period carried on for quite some time, particularly on the radio. Coppola makes good use of music in the film, both as sonic wallpaper and to cue important moments, as Scorsese is also wont to do.  It also becomes part of the plot when the boys trade songs with the Lisbon girls over the telephone later in the movie.  I’m remembering Heart, Styx, maybe early Bee Gees or Carpenters.  Even now, these songs trigger a lot of sentiment in me, even a sort of free-floating kind without real memories attached.  Of course, Coppola wrote her script about the five young girls who eventually commit suicide from a pre-existing book.  But the style with which she imbues the film is her own and it is refreshing and a delight. Kirsten Dunst takes a star-making turn or at least the camera gives her significant air time in a hazy sunlit seventies way so that she is the de facto star. James Woods and Kathleen Turner make good constipated parents who cause all the problems.  Now that we’ve seen the trajectory of Coppola’s films, I guess we can say that her focus on style might have diminishing returns but you never can tell.