About Some Meaningless Events (1974)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

About Some Meaningless Events (1974) – M. Derkaoui

A “lost” Moroccan film that was recently found and restored (and streaming on Mubi.com) which blends reality and fiction in a way that was clearly ahead of its time.  We find ourselves in Casablanca, in a dockworkers’ pub, where the mostly male clientele grandstand and argue. The camera is clearly at a distance, using a telephoto lens, because various punters keep getting in the way of the shot.  It seems authentic cinema verité until the director strolls in and the actors break character.  The film eventually switches gears so that the director takes a part in the story, now interviewing average Moroccans (“not all young people, please”) to find out what they want from a Moroccan national cinema.  Most say they want movies to focus on social issues and the experiences of average people rather than commercial films made for entertainment purposes only (Egyptian cintema and Bruce Lee’s The Big Boss are mentioned as counterpoints).  One interviewee, a young man with a huge afro, seems evasive and soon we find him back in the original bar, where the director and his team soon set up their equipment.  When the young man attacks another patron, who turns out to be his employer, and accidentally kills him, the director realises that he has the chance to make a different film, a film about this young man and the murder (in other words, a film about social issues affecting real Moroccans).  However, none of this is really spelled out in so many words – the dialogue is all overheard and overlapping snippets. A lot of the footage provides ambiance and raises the question – is it staged, improvised, shot without permission, or what? Similar to the Iranian New Wave films (Kiarostami, Panahi) that also use amateurs to similar effect, inviting us to question not only what reality is but also the director’s motives and choices for artistic expression and the “message”. Enjoyable, too, for that Seventies feel (and the jazz/Moroccan music on the soundtrack).

Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) – B. Morrison

I don’t know how director Bill Morrison decided to structure this unique documentary but I imagine that it went something like this. First, he heard about the 1978 Dawson Film Find which involved 533 reels of nitrate film from the silent era being uncovered beneath an old recreation centre in the Yukon Territory town. (As I’m sure you are aware, the highly flammable film stock has mostly burned up in fires around the world, decimating our silent film history).  Then, he interviewed some of the protagonists (those who rescued the films) and reviewed the silent films themselves, pondering how he might use clips from the old films in his own.  It wasn’t long before he realised that he could tell the history of Dawson City itself which was founded around about the same time as cinema itself began.  He used clips from the Film Find, yes, but also other period footage and still photos and other related images, such as clips from Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925).  You see, Dawson City was born, lived, and basically died as a result of the great Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 when 40,000 prospectors settled in the area (displacing the local First Nations people, as Morrison sadly points out). Fortunes were made via gold by a few but many more seemed to have profited by running saloons and brothels and gambling parlours. Dawson City was the end of the film distribution line in Canada and films that were 2 or 3 years old played there and then the studio didn’t want them back.  By the 1940s, there were so many films piled up in the old library basement that a decision was made to junk them – most were destroyed but some were buried in the old recreation building when a swimming pool was filled in.  Fast forward to 1978.  The resultant film is nearly wordless, with text on the images telling us the story (or giving attributions for the clips), and with Sigur Ros accomplice Alex Somers’ glacial soundtrack, the effect is hypnotic.  I really got a sense of the time and place and thought about how different the world was then (for better and for worse).  I also thought about the Klondike Derby and my memories of trekking through the snow with a dogsled (pulled by other boy scouts) and performing various tasks (building a fire, first aid, orienteering) in snowy New Hampshire.  Hello Troop 75!  Of course, an all-pervading sense of loss accompanies what we see here – but, if you get a chance to view this masterpiece of cinematic art, I highly recommend it.

The Souvenir (2019)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Souvenir (2019) – J. Hogg

Engrossing drama which follows Julia (Honor Swinton Byrne; yes, Tilda’s daughter), an aspiring British filmmaker, who starts an unfortunate romance with a man from the Foreign Office, Anthony (Tom Burke). The film takes place in the early ‘80s, as the fashion and musical cues (not to mention typewriters) quickly alert us – it feels right to me.  Director Joanna Hogg allows herself a number of unobtrusive stylistic flourishes but mainly tells the story from Julia’s perspective in a straightforward way, notwithstanding some significant ellipses in the plot.  Although we discover Anthony’s tragic secret (from Richard Ayoade no less) along with Julia, other crucial moments happen offscreen (e.g., Julia & Anthony’s discussion of the secret and Julia’s sharing of the secret with her mum, Tilda Swinton – yes, the actor’s real mum). In many ways, this is a coming-of-age tale, even though Julia is 25 – she has approached filmmaking naively, hoping to tell a kitchen sink drama without having experienced anything but privilege herself. The souvenir that Anthony leaves her is undoubtedly her own traumatic story to tell (although at one point I worried that the souvenir might actually be something more infectious). It seems that a sequel has already been completed and I’ll look forward to it.

 

The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Haunting of Hill House (2018) – M. Flanagan

I capped off 2020 with this 10-episode miniseries from Horror director Mike Flanagan (that originally aired on Netflix but I saw courtesy of my local library’s DVD collection).  I haven’t watched much TV in recent years, even with the current renaissance underway, but I dabble here and there.  To me, the up-side is the ability to develop deeper richer characterisations and also to have extended story arcs.  Here, we follow a family of seven who purchase haunted Hill House in order to fix it up and flip it; their one summer in the house proves to have a lasting effect on their lives.  The series alternates between scenes of the family in the house (when the oldest child, Steven, is 13 or so) and scenes that are 25 or more years later when everyone is older (and played by different actors, including Timothy Hutton as the dad). In these non-flashback scenes, we discover that everyone in the family is coping with some serious issues, potentially stemming from the fact that the mother died during that fateful summer.  The beauty of the series is that it manages to create and sustain some ambiguity about whether the various mental and relationship problems of the characters are due to grief and the trauma around an unexpected death or alternately are due to evil ghosts and their long icy fingers that reach well beyond the perimeter of the evil house.  Viewers and the characters themselves are torn about which it could be (i.e., the ghosts we and they see could be hallucinations or even just visceral memories of the past).  The down-side of extended TV series is that they sometimes struggle to maintain a satisfying flow or they can’t quite seal the deal and conclude in a satisfying way.  Here, as the last couple of episodes unfold, the ambiguity around the events is (I suppose necessarily) resolved and this makes things somewhat too literal.  That said, the fact that the ending harkens back rather explicitly to the classic film version of Shirley Jackson’s novel, The Haunting (1963) did help this viewer to accept the conclusion.  I think too that the messiness of the ending (trying to resolve 7 character trajectories all at once) leaves some things open to interpretation.  In the end, I enjoyed this and recommend it for fans of the supernatural and also family drama.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Strangers on a Train (1951) – A. Hitchcock

There is something a bit unsatisfying about Strangers on a Train despite Hitchcock’s awesome technical prowess and complete mastery of the use of suspense. I’ll chalk it up to the presence of Farley Granger and Ruth Roman, a rather dull pair of lead actors.  Robert Walker, in contrast, is magnificently psychopathic as the stranger who strikes up a conversation (on a train) with Granger, offering to kill his wife (Kasey Rogers) in exchange for Granger killing Walker’s father.  You see, Granger, an up and coming tennis star, is seeking a divorce from cheating Rogers that will allow him to marry Roman, a senator’s daughter (the film takes place in DC).  Walker’s father may or may not be a tyrant – it seems more likely that Walker perceives persecution that is not there.  At any rate, Walker carries out his side of the “bargain” (again, all in his head) at a small town carnival and then pressures Granger to follow through on his end.  Of course, he won’t and Walker promises to retaliate.  The police are closing in all the while.  The suspense arrives when Granger must finish a tennis match at Forest Hills, NY, before racing back to the small town carnival to catch Walker before he plants evidence at the scene of the crime (when Walker also drops said evidence down the drain, the tension is ratcheted up even further). Indeed, Hitchcock is near the top of his game, playing with audience expectations and spiking the film with a dash of morbid humour).  If only he’d managed to get a stronger cast…but of course, his real masterworks were soon to come.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Miracle on 34^th Street (1947) – G. Seaton

When was the last time I watched this? Not for a while and certainly not with kids by my side.  We are at that time when the boys may be doubting Santa’s existence, so this movie which confronts that issue directly was particularly relevant.  They were both glued to the screen but indicated afterward that the movie was “not the best” (but it is hard to take that judgment seriously – although it could be a general disdain for B&W films as a whole).  Edmund Gwenn plays Kris Kringle who is recruited by Maureen O’Hara to “act” as Santa for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and then in the store meeting with children. However, he claims to be the real Santa and eventually falls foul of the store’s psychologist, despite passing all of the mental exams they could provide.  Fortunately, when he is assigned to a commitment hearing, he has lawyer John Payne in his corner. Payne is also romantically interested in O’Hara, who by the way has been raising her daughter Natalie Wood not to believe in Claus.  Gwenn sees it as a personal challenge to convince them – but he and Payne also have to convince the New York Supreme Court that Santa is real and Kringle is him.  Of course, they do!  I teared up a few times, I must admit. 

The Rider (2017)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Rider (2017) – C. Zhao

Bleak, sombre and somehow opaque study of a young rodeo rider who sees his dreams closed off after a terrible head injury. Brady Jandreau essentially plays a version of himself and director Chloé Zhao leaves him alone with his feelings for long stretches of the film. (This is the opaque part). He is joined by his real dad and intellectually impaired real sister, also playing versions of themselves.  All non-actors.  Brady struggles with his desire to ride again and even to compete riding broncos once more, knowing that any additional fall could be fatal.  We see him bond with horses and recognise his real talents in working with them and feel sorrow for his plight. However, we also see that fate has let him off (relatively) easy, as his best mate, also a budding rodeo star, is now a paraplegic after a fall (also playing himself).  Yet despite these terrible dangers, none of the boys seem to be able to pull away from the allure of the rodeo and Brady does nothing to dissuade his friends (and fans) from engaging in the same behaviours that harmed him and his friend. It’s hard to know what’s on his mind – but the impoverished cultural milieu all around them (in Pine Ridge, South Dakota) probably means that dangerous dreams die hard. There’s an unavoidable documentary feel here but Zhao’s poetic direction lifts it into a more introspective vein.