Pavements (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Pavements (2024) – A. R. Perry

One of the reviews on Letterboxd suggests that a viewer at a film festival needed to google Pavement to learn about the band – if this is you, this is not your movie. However, if you’re like me, owning all of their records which were on steady rotation back in the day (and therefore virtually memorised), then Pavements will be something of a trippy experience. Or let’s just say director Alex Ross Perry capitalises on the sense of absurdity and ridiculousness that was an undercurrent in the band’s work (so if that’s also something that brings a smirk to your face, I say go for it). The film has 4 or 5 strands all interwoven but skilfully edited to provide not just an historical narrative of the band but an emotional one which crescendos at the end, celebrating Pavement’s 2022 reunion shows (which I somehow skipped here in Melbourne; but did see Malkmus’s subsequent emergence in The Hard Quartet this year). We see scenes of the band rehearsing for the reunion as well as clips from the past, all the way back to the beginning, but we never get a complete song – everything is excerpts, offering tantalising primes that trigger longer memories and complete versions of unplayed songs as earworms. Everything else in the film is a form of fiction, a staged “meta” take on the “what if” aspect of the Pavement story, as in “what if” they actually became as famous as contemporaries Nirvana.  In that fan-fiction future, there’s a Pavement museum in NYC – we see the gallery opening featuring other Matador bands playing Pavement songs (snippets only, naturally), and an array of celebs (Thurston Moore et al.) mingling with the members of Pavement and the assorted hipsterati, amongst the many (catalogued) artefacts (t-shirts and weirder) from the band’s past. It seems that this event really happened, but how staged it was is hard to say (clearly there is no such museum).  Weirder still, the producers may have really issued a call for auditions for a proposed Pavement stage musical (“Slanted! Enchanted!”) – we see earnest Broadway wannabes singing their hearts out via Gold Soundz and a few dance numbers (cringeworthy, yes, but fitting in some way?). It’s possible to see Stephen Malkmus’s guiding hand behind some of this, as absurdly self-mocking as it seems. The final strand is the hardest to digest and the most distancing (at least for this viewer – is it Brechtian?). To provide more narrative grit to the Pavement story (and align it with the cliches of the music doc?), and again as a kind of fan-fiction, we are treated to a parallel version of the band’s story in which Spiral Stairs (Scott Kannberg, played by Nat Wolff) is bitter about the band’s lack of success, Malkmus (played by Joe Keery) is visibly alienated from the possibility of fame, and there’s a faux climax focused on Lollapalooza’s mud-slinging incident which leads to an intense band discussion (in contrast to the reality of the band laughing in the green room after the incident which is shown in split-screen).  The producers cast actors in the role of band members and relevant record label execs (Tim Heidecker as Gerard Cosloy; Jason Schwarzman as Chris Lombardi; founders of Matador records who also appear as themselves) and we see actors preparing for their roles by emulating historic footage of the band (e.g., using a voice coach to get Malkmus’s vocal fry just right and examining a photo of his tongue) which takes us further into bizarro-world. Ultimately, the film offers an opportunity for an extended (128 minutes) meditation/reverie on the band (with Perry using all the cinematic techniques at his disposal to keep it interesting), if that’s what yer looking for; if you don’t know the band, I suspect the film would be nearly incomprehensible. I haven’t pulled this out for a while but for a straight-up documentary of the band you might try Lance Bangs’ Slow Century (2002). For my part, I enjoyed these moments of (self-)indulgence.

Conclave (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Conclave (2024) – E. Berger

I watched Conclave for Easter but it barely triggered a memory of my Catholic high school past (apart from the fancy dress, there’s little to no religious content here).  Instead, I was reminded of Advise and Consent (1962) where liberal Henry Fonda’s nomination to be Secretary of State is subjected to game-playing and deceit by both sides of politics, in an effort to block or confirm his appointment.  Here, there are more than a few rivals for the Popedom, including liberal Stanley Tucci, conservative Sergio Castellitto, ambitious John Lithgow, and the first viable African candidate Lucian Msamati.  Ralph Fiennes is the Dean of the Cardinals whose job it is to organise a conclave to elect the next pope when the old one suddenly passes away. He’s ready to leave the Vatican due to a spiritual crisis but commits to managing the conclave as a sort of final act, even as he is drawn into the political intrigue, with candidates jockeying for position and their dirty laundry aired by their opponents (or uncovered via investigation by Fiennes). Although the film feels grim at times (since this is “serious” business), as it proceeds and the tension and speculation grow (with vote after vote unsuccessful – only grey, not white, smoke sent up the Vatican’s chimney), it suddenly exploded for me into something a bit more berserk.  The director, Edward Berger, plays the audience, letting the melodrama erupt into something more absurd (unless you are willing to believe that God has sent a message to Fiennes). To top things off, after the pope is chosen, there’s a surprise coda at the end of the film, like the last chocolate egg discovered once the hunt has concluded. This final offering reverberates beyond the final credits, a remarkable curveball to strike out the last batter and leave the other team and most spectators speechless. You can see why Peter Straughan’s screenplay (adapted from the book by Robert Harris) won the Oscar, even though the acting prowess on display did garner noms for Fiennes and for Isabella Rossellini as a nun who intervenes at a key moment. The only question that remains is whether the film’s contribution to political discourse could be read as less-than-serious (given all that’s preceded it) when in fact it’s worth genuinely absorbing.  

 

Nosferatu (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Nosferatu (2024) – R. Eggers

Everyone knows the story by now, having seen the Murnau (Max Schreck), Herzog (Klaus Kinski), Coppola (Gary Oldman), Universal (Bela Lugosi), or Hammer (Christopher Lee) versions of Bram Stoker’s Dracula on film.  Murnau changed the names (from Dracula to Orlok, Harker to Hutter, Jonathan to Thomas, Mina to Ellen, and so on) but was still sued by Stoker’s widow. Director Robert Eggers retains Murnau’s names in this new version but, although it starts out as such (and includes some of the “authentic” or previously shot locations), this is not the same faithful remake that Herzog already made in 1979.  Instead, this is another “variation on a theme” wrought by a director for whom the material is very near and dear (he directed a high school drama production of the story). He claims he only made the film because he found a new angle: Orlok and Ellen have an original bond that precedes her marriage to Hutter which sets the plot in motion and draws Orlok to her, all the way from Transylvania to the fictional German city of Wismark.  Hutter’s journey to the Count’s castle (sent by Herr Knock/Renfield), his stopover in the Gypsy village, and his nights with Orlok remain similar but Eggers adds his exquisite visual panache, production design and sound design (as displayed in his previous films: The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019), and The Northman (2022)). Indeed, this version of the classic tale feels bigger and bolder (perhaps because I saw it in the cinema) and very soon, we have left the original narrative behind, leaving only its contours.  Lily Rose-Depp is magnetic (and also feral) as Ellen, Willem Dafoe provides some comic relief as Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz (the Van Helsing counterpart), and Bill Skarsgård is, uh, very different from previous portrayals, as a gruesome Orlok (as a decomposing Hungarian nobleman). In the end, Eggers takes us someplace new, not scary (although there are a few jump-scares for the target audience) but definitely uncanny. Ultimately, he reveals the Count as, yes, evil but also as pathetic as anyone hopelessly obsessed can turn out to be.