Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

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knives
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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#26 Post by knives » Fri Jun 02, 2017 8:17 am

If you include Dumbo you may also have to include Make Mine Music as well.

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swo17
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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#27 Post by swo17 » Fri Jun 02, 2017 10:12 am

If its category had been Best Animated Film it would have been eligible. But as it stands, it was only recognized for that element of its production.

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#28 Post by TMDaines » Fri Jun 02, 2017 11:48 am

It was given a Grand Prix as the other four were:

http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/69-ed ... ompetition

I don't think there were categories as such, seems like the festival just honoured a handful of films with Grand Prix awards and found a reason.

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#29 Post by swo17 » Fri Jun 02, 2017 11:57 am

Right, it received a Grand Prix for dessin animé. All the others received one for "Best _______ Film." Perhaps it's semantics but I can see why domino excluded it. I wouldn't mind if he made it eligible (not that it would change my list either way), but it's his call.

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knives
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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#30 Post by knives » Fri Jun 09, 2017 4:03 pm

Black Jesus
This is an absolutely captivating film which deserves a much higher profile. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't really succeed, but as a messy film it doesn't get much better. The technical side of things and the acting is all superb. Even dubbed over Woody Strode despite playing a bit of an enigma accomplishes some humane and emotional acting which is always tough in this sort of role. Where the film starts to not succeed at its, extremely high, goals is with its fusion of two contradictory voices to the extent that in a good half hour of the film drops what's frankly the less interesting part. The movie on the whole is a Battle of Algiers knock-off set in the Belgian Congo with the very interesting novelty being that it is told as a passion play. The passion play part to the film brings up a Glauber Rocha tendency in the film, but that never really works with the more realistic threading of allegory to history consistently proving itself the best aspect of the film.

Given how slavish the film is to the passion play aspect it risked having the politics be side-lined or muddled. So while I don't think it is as complete a statement as Battle of Algiers nor as well thought out it does do a good job of fusing it to the allegory so that the idea of resisting against corruption never falls out. Of course that is also born pretty naturally out of the Christ story. The fact that the film uses colonialism more as a way to explore this in a modern setting rather as a subject in itself may turn off some, but I think that it is a fairly savvy comparison point given the status the Romans had for the Jews (though our Christ here is more Aqivah than Christ). Another element of this that the film doesn't entirely work out, and certainly would breed frustration from within a certain part of the Internet, is the expansion of Barabbas into the lead of the film (the Italian title makes this very clear). For the story this is probably a plus since a more straightforward passion play would make an already derivative film feel completely frankensteined. On the other hand this seems motivated mostly as a way to give the film a white, Italian in fact, character a heroic part considering how evil all of the other white parts are.

Banditi a milano
I had a lot of hope for this one given Lizzani's reputation and the potential of the genre even if I haven't really seen it pulled off with a great film yet. Unfortunately what we have is a plain exploitation film which while classical to several faults suffers from such bad filmmaking throughout it is hard to believe that this was made by so many seasoned professionals. I'll be shocked if the '68 lineup proves to have anything worse than this mess that starts with Faces of Death (a woman gets immolated alive in the first ten minutes as part of a series of sketches that lasts too long for example) and ends in a pity. It's a miracle of Volonte and Milian's skills that when they are on screen the film lights up as if it were good, but even in those moments Lizzani or the script will do something stupid to undermine the whole enterprise. With the day of the final heist the film does become more or less a good film with a decent story and some great acting, but it is far too little far too late.

Two Cents Worth of Hope
I feel bad that my main take away from this is a delight in the sheer Italian-ness of Castellani's world since it offers many other qualities. In it's opening the film calls attention to its sociological worth by being very specific of where the action takes place, of the foot of Mt. Vesuvius, and it continues to be most interesting as a dressed up variation of very traditional Italian values and how they rub poorly against modernity, specifically life with the economic downturns following the war. The film regularly breaks its Matarazzo light comic melodrama to give somewhat humourous descriptions of the layout of the city and how that influences daily life of the residents. It's not as delightful as the big story stuff (everything with the mother is just as funny as can be), but these pockets full of neighborhood building are genuinely fascinating in their own right with a sense of location that really calls for an enhanced level of engagement. Perhaps this isn't objectively the best film to win even in its year, but this has to go high on the list of Cannes winners which are pleasurable.

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#31 Post by Brian C » Fri Jun 09, 2017 6:59 pm

I've made a point to catch every Palme winner theatrically since The Pianist in 2002, and today I, Daniel Blake opened here in Chicago more than a full year after its Palme win. Of the last 15 winners, it's by far the least interesting film, and I'm pretty baffled about how it won - it's too dull to conceivably be a favorite regardless of one's political sympathies and seems like an unlikely consensus for second choice as well.

As I'd expect from Loach, it's a well-meaning and sincere film in its way, but it's desperately toothless - is there anyone on the planet who isn't frustrated by obnoxious bureaucracy? I can't think of anyone regardless of their spot on the ideological spectrum who wouldn't be part of the choir that Loach is preaching to here, and while I of course don't know the ins and outs of England's welfare system, I doubt that the layers of bureaucratic nonsense portrayed in the film will come as enough of a surprise to anyone for the film to succeed as a rabble-rouser.

I can't even say that the film is particularly well-made. A couple of plot points struck me as overly melodramatic for the story being told, and the ending is botched horribly even aside from the questionable choice of resolution. I really liked a quiet speech Blake gives about his late wife, but none of the big emotional moments aside from that had much impact. Characters aside from the two leads tend to be one-note and indifferently acted. The camerawork and editing struck me as generic if not outright halfhearted (more on this below). I've liked other Loach films I've seen, but this was an odd choice for the award, much more so that its predecessor Dheepan, which also was the source of puzzlement when its win was announced.

As an aside, this is the first Loach film I've seen since the world went digital, and it seemed to me like the director is out of his element, not unlike Blake trying to figure out the internet. The clear digital photography just seemed all wrong to me, as if it gave the whole film a sheen of artificiality; I felt like I could imagine the crew just out of the shot. Maybe I've just seen so many gritty social dramas on film, with the typical heavy grain, and it's biased me about how this kind of thing should look? It was shot by Robbie Ryan, who is an accomplished DP (he regularly works with Andrea Arnold), but something seemed really off about the way it looked.

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#32 Post by knives » Sun Jun 11, 2017 3:54 pm

The Upthrown Stone
'68 must have been an especially good year for Hungarian cinema if this Cannes lineup is any indication. Sara's film is nothing like the Jancso films with a greater reminiscence to Szabo, especially Father, though even that doesn't capture the visual darkness the film has towards its themes of memory, lies, and the then current political landscape. There's a very nasty irony here, most evident in the first scene where the watch the movie though spread thickly throughout, that seems to take a lot of talking points and ideas of political righteousness and show it as self destructive. The opening scene with the father and the trains is funny and political in an easily digestible fashion. Here is a veteran of the fight against the whites who can't get even basic wants like regular train traffic for his service. The film slow burns more information about the scene though as the film goes along making the opening less plainly funny and more depressing until we get to the point where it is horrific in its casual apocalypse for those even tertiary to the event (particularly the son). I get the sense this is a really significant film for Hungarians which is understandable as it must have served a major catharsis at least. As an outsider though the film doesn't seem as amazing or great being enjoyable and interesting to a point. Some of the more arthouse trappings like the oblique storytelling, constant montages, and roving camera work feel like inorganic distractions from a story that could have been better served with greater simplicity or a better fleshing out of the leads who come off as histories without personalities much of the time.

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#33 Post by knives » Thu Jun 15, 2017 1:24 pm

Underground
This is on the theatrical cut which I presume is what won the Palme. Either way though I can't remember the last time I saw a film this horrible. I mean horrible in a great way as the film is so sexist, nihilistic, and overall just a black hole of terrible people behaving terribly which makes me love it. This is both a very logical and very weird choice of winner. With its sexual energy, subject, and scope the movie could have been one of the Bertolucci epics, but Kusturica decides to render the characters dumb and horrible in a way that left my mouth agape.

It's also interesting to think of this film historically. There's no way it could have been made even just five years earlier given its view on the communist party, but also had it shown even one or two years later I imagine that the situation in the Balkans would have changed the purpose of the humour. I certainly want more context for its making now. This also gets into my sole complaint that the last section seems rushed and confusing, though I could easily believe this is the most cut section from the television version and that it works better in that context.

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#34 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:25 am

There's about two weeks left to get some viewings in and compile a list to submit! Are you going to let knives have all the fun here and not post your thoughts on some of these films? Hell no you're not, start contributing! Here's my effort for now on some recent viewings:

Antoine et Antoinette (Jacques Becker 1947) Cute fluff about a struggling French couple who win the lottery, only to suffer a series of astonishing misfortunes and coincidences regarding the fate of their ticket. The plot here barely matters, as the real fun is in watching all the location shooting and memorable characters populating the screen. A slight lark with a script that could have come out of Hollywood with few changes-- though surely sans the little touches here like the pair of extreme zooms that get so close to the protagonist’s head that the camera actually hits him in the face!

Miracolo a Milano (Vittorio de Sica 1951) De Sica moves from realistic portrayals of the lives of the destitute to an unexpectedly comic fantasy involving a cabbage-patch kid who exits the orphanage and enters a shantytown, quickly becoming a focal figure for all the cheery poor folk within even before a magic dove comes into play. The film is entertaining and embraces its fantastic elements in the final third with admirable gusto, but that only means this is a well-made bad film centered on a thinly-veiled superiority to these people that is all the more surprising coming from the so-called champion of the poor in Italian cinema.

I refute absolutely the notion that this film exhibits anything but contempt for the homeless characters which populate the narrative. Everyone here just looooooves being poor. It’s the greatest! You don’t have to do anything but beg, and you even get paid by a chocolatier for that too! Otherwise, work is a foreign concept and far from the minds of these empty-headed dolts who want nothing more than to celebrate squalor, sometimes in song. The displaced persons in this film are all cheerful simpletons, who, when presented with the opportunity to obtain anything via magical intervention, choose token symbols of the upper class (a fur coat, a top hat) rather than anything that would further their advancement out of this blissful state of ignorance (no one asks for a job or skills to obtain one). Are their newfound accoutrements comically contrasted with their surroundings and socioeconomic position? You know it, dude. Most of the gags in the film are at the expense of these flamboyant transients— they’re so wacky, the film keeps insisting! What a jolly sort these poors are!

The single worst moment in this film (and in any film I’ve seen in some time) comes when two peripheral characters, a widowed white woman and what I presume is an AWOL African-American soldier, who have been giving each other sad side-glances for most of the picture, have their fondest wishes granted in a fashion that gives O Henry retrospective charity. This sequence is offensive not for its racially-predicated make-up and punchline, but because it uses two non-jubilant characters solely to set up a mean-spirited and cruel joke at their expense, and both then disappear from the film once they’ve served this function. I guess if you’re not having the time of your life living in mud and filth, you deserve to get fucked over by a dove-clutching elf. After this, I wish I could say I was surprised that our protagonist’s solution to the central narrative problem of the film is to enact a suicide pact with all of the denizens of the camp, but that sounded about right. And the characters are of course gleefully cheerful as they Heaven’s Gate it up to the afterlife!

Union Pacific (Cecil B DeMille 1939) This would have been a forgettable enough mainstream (read: overlong) western made in the era before filmmakers used the genre to plumb psychological depths had a committee not declared it worthy of being the quasi-“first” top prize winner, where it now wears an uneasy crown. Not that it was competing against much in the 2002 retrospective awarding of this film, but at least Goodbye Mr Chips has auspices of sporadic nuance and also benefited from not featuring Robert Preston as the ponciest "grizzled" criminal imaginable. There’s a moment in this film in which a train rider is chastised for shooting an indian from a moving train for fun. Not because of the loss of the innocent indian's life, but because now three white men will be killed in response. I’ll let you parse the underlying ideology driving that brushed-off exchange…

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#35 Post by knives » Sun Jun 18, 2017 10:05 am

I assume you got the Arrow for the De Sica in which case you should check out the other film included which is good and sort of counters the horrible ending here.

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#36 Post by Shrew » Sun Jun 18, 2017 11:25 pm

I feel like Miracle in Milan is the kind of awful film Capra's detractors think he made. Though I do give the film some credit for its depiction of the rich businessman who deals with the poor via polite non-statements followed by tear gas.

The Son's Room--The international art film equivalent of a Sundance indie dramedy. I don't mean that entirely pejoratively; I enjoy a lot of those films. They're easy to digest, move along at a good clip, draw a couple chuckles and a few tears. Then they're gone, and you realize how little there was. This is a skeleton filled in with quirky patients, some carefully curated music, and plot device characters to stretch out the grieving process. But the biggest problem is the cipher of a
son (and also how the parents don't put together the obvious clues as to the son's motives leading to his death, as if the audience is supposed to feel smart for connecting the dots). Still, it's hard not to be moved by the Eno. This is not a film to hate, but it's gonna be nowhere near my list.

Winter Sleep--3 hours of ugh, this guy. While our protagonist was never meant to be likable, current events make it extra hard to sympathize with a rich old man who refuses to get involved with the dirty work his real estate practices have wrought, stonewalls infrastructure improvements, fails to understand anything his clients want, jumps on any remark that brushes against his thin skin, and spends most of his time pouting after his much younger disaffected wife. But it's pretty. More dollys in on silhouettes at windows, less cringing please.

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knives
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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#37 Post by knives » Mon Jun 19, 2017 6:20 am

Wait, we were supposed to figure something out about the son? I think my brain just shut off in any scene without the Young Pope actor since his character was the only one that seemed interesting with a life outside a Disney Channel movie.

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knives
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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#38 Post by knives » Mon Jun 19, 2017 4:18 pm

Last two for the '68 (still have three left for the main list)
Je t'aime je t'aime
A spin-off of sorts from his Far from Vietnam short, Resnais' sci-fi explanation of technique is good, but never as good as the films it seemingly influenced such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There's a lot to like here from the sparse set design to the deadpan humour and especially the editing which develops the idea of memory and relationship in a very good way. I do feel though that the framing device, however much amusement and narrative explanation it produces, is the first sign of Resnais' decline from the best French filmmaker into merely one of the best. The cinematic conceits as a form of narration here would have in the past been the whole of the film and Ridder's relationship is good enough to sustain a film on its own so the frame seems unnecessary and almost cowardly. It's especially frustrating when Hollywood, in Two for the Road, uses the same basic conceit at around the same time with more confidence and frankly in a better movie.

Again though this is a good movie that is very touching with a narrative experiment that succeeds in using repetition and montage to highlight the importance of perfunctory moments and the snowball effect of them in building life. During these long stretches in Ridder's brain we get a sense of not just how remembering something repeats the event, but how we repeat events because of how we don't remember causing an almost never ending circle. It's very sad and broken in a way that does feel like the conclusion to a career which I guess is a truth in light of where Resnais would go next.

24 Hours in the Life of a Woman
This isn't a bad movie, but it is one that is lacking a lot. It's a cursory adaptation of Zweig feeling only like an imitation of the artist, or the art of the era, making the soul yearn for Ophuls or Lubitsch (how badly we missed out on that potential collaboration).

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domino harvey
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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#39 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jun 19, 2017 4:33 pm

I think the Resnais is an utter crock, with the most overrated editing choices I can think of. The film's a mess and feels like both a self-parody of Resnais' earlier "difficult" works (a direction he'd never revisit, choosing instead to make films difficult to sit through for other reasons) and an attempt to be Chris Marker. Failed at both. Recently, the film had, not unlike a certain Rivette film, been given vaunted status leading up to the Kino release due to its unavailablity on home media. Note how claims of it being a masterpiece fell off once it was more freely acquirable... anyways, I'm increasingly bitter and uncharitable towards Resnais, even if his works up to La guerre est finie are still masterpieces (and that one's okay), so it's probably not as bad as all that. But it is.

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#40 Post by Shrew » Mon Jun 19, 2017 4:40 pm

I think it's made pretty clear that the son in Son's Room was diving to look for a seashell to replace the one he stole and broke. There's a sequence with them asking "Why did he go diving?" "Why did have dirt in his nails?" A more interesting film could have explored the fact that his moral decision to accept responsibility leads to his death, but this is not it.

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knives
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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#41 Post by knives » Mon Jun 19, 2017 4:48 pm

I agree with you, especially the Marker comments, though perhaps I am more willing to be charitable to the film (which is just not as daring as the outline suggests) because I have fortunately only seen two of his bad films (and I'll still maintain that his two films before Life of Riley are great works of fluff). I really just wish Resnais had been willing to follow through with his idea and find it absolutely appalling that Donen showed him up as badly as he did. I think also a problem is how thinly drawn the characters are. There's nothing really to say about the woman and even Ridder doesn't have much in the way of character (which the framing device seems to acknowledge) leaving the tragedy at the end muted. The strength of the conceit itself is quite powerful and leaves the film some magic, but again you could just watch Two for the Road.
Shrew wrote:I think it's made pretty clear that the son in Son's Room was diving to look for a seashell to replace the one he stole and broke. There's a sequence with them asking "Why did he go diving?" "Why did have dirt in his nails?" A more interesting film could have explored the fact that his moral decision to accept responsibility leads to his death, but this is not it.
Oh, yeah the film really didn't pay enough mind to that for it to penetrate.

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knives
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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#42 Post by knives » Thu Jun 22, 2017 12:18 pm

Final set of capsules. Hopefully I'm not going to be the only one submitting a list. 8-[
Les maudits
There's a really likable post war crudeness on display here. Clement, as usual for him, doesn't deliver a great film, but many elements of the production which are of the time give a very pleasant face to the film that make it instantly engaging and fun.

When Father Was Away on Business
This is even more confusing and dependent on knowledge of local politics than Underground which made it very hard for me to get into the film. All of this probably plays a big deal in my lesser enthusiasm for the film, but I think also Kusturica's more mundane approach here just isn't as compelling with Manojlovic sidelined despite being the most engaging presence here. Everything is okay and it is nice to see a film be so blatant about the subject. That just can't overcome how the incidents of the film are told without energy and a finger twiddlers sense of purpose. Kusturica has made the opposite of Underground; a movie with too little to talk about.

Padre Padrone
My understanding is that this film won more for political reasons, it was made for television and Rossellini headed the jury, than directly for the quality which made it a bit more in the air than some of the other high profile titles. Fortunately the film is great, probably the best I have yet seen from the Taviani, with more than a little bit of Ermanno Olmi as the spine though the influences and feeling of the movie is all over the map. It is often poetic both in its visuals and voice over, crude, and cruel. On the last point though it worked for me in building this strange world I could understand people not liking the film for its violent and repetitious nature especially in the first half hour. The film doesn't merely show fathers abusing sons, but also the sons abusing the animals (in a multitude of ways), fathers abusing mothers, and so on in a way that is genuinely uncomfortable to watch given how pointless even the characters seem to feel about it and the humour that pops up only in them. There's something so compelling about the way they integrate the low humour of the people with the film's perceived high class of the written word. The scene as they leave the village to fight for example gives reign to a whole host of emotions like a reversal of Murnau's Tabu. In a way he's been damned by the physical world and already in the '50s, or whenever the bulk of the film takes place, society has become an abstract place where experiences outside of life, preferably through books and television, are necessary to be a full human. The scene at the barracks where Ledda is cursed by only knowing his regions dialect is amazing in its ability to swiftly show how isolating existing in a present only can be.

The silences which fill the film become less and less beautiful as the film goes on and instead gain the power of the horrific as they commit him to a world of ignorance like a stone observing the world turn. Only with the introduction of the instructor, an unrecognizable Nanni Moretti, and dictionary does the world have sound to it; does it begin to replicate the real world rather than the inner fantasies of a little boy talking to sheep. Reality still has elements of the fantastic, such as the tank, but it is the controlled fantasy of someone that let the passivity of the present behind to live in the future. I am not sure to what degree I am comfortable with all this (the film also seems political in the direction of the left, but in opposition to the sorts of Marxism and Maoism popular in other films of the era) as it seems to build a dichotomy that isn't necessarily a fact for all people (though I don't doubt it true for Ledda). Though, and this is what makes this a great film, that's okay as it makes its argument in a mature and engaging manner that feels capable of debate. That level of academia is hard to achieve in art that remains fully engaging as art as well. I'm now super excited to finish the rest of this set and can only hope more of their films get releases.

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#43 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jun 26, 2017 3:36 am

Sorry for my lack of posts here, life and a number of other unwatched things got in the way, but I definitely have a list in preparation!
knives wrote:When Father Was Away on Business
This is even more confusing and dependent on knowledge of local politics than Underground which made it very hard for me to get into the film. All of this probably plays a big deal in my lesser enthusiasm for the film, but I think also Kusturica's more mundane approach here just isn't as compelling with Manojlovic sidelined despite being the most engaging presence here. Everything is okay and it is nice to see a film be so blatant about the subject. That just can't overcome how the incidents of the film are told without energy and a finger twiddlers sense of purpose. Kusturica has made the opposite of Underground; a movie with too little to talk about.
It has been a while since I've seen this but it really benefits Kusturica to see some of his early films before he became a lot more allegorical. His debut film Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (more in the vein of a teen sex comedy) followed by When Father Was Away On Business are his kind of more 'graspable' works, taking a standard period biographical approach to vignettes of a childhood in a specific cultural setting (I slightly bracket When Father Was Away On Business as the Eastern European equivalent of something like My Life As A Dog or even The Railway Children, in the sense it being a period-set film focusing on children watching the almost incomprehensibly bizarre machinations, rules and rituals of the adult world from the margins and left to interpret their father's absence for 'political' reasons in their own ways).

The turning point, and arguably his masterpiece, was 1989's Time of the Gypsies, where the epic scale and giant allegorical images and set pieces start showing up (its also where I suspect Bjork's It's All So Quiet music video got the inspiration for its final shot from!). Unfortunately from that point there was little to do to move on from that but repeat the trick (in Underground, which does make a good companion piece), go to the US (in Arizona Dream, with Johnny Depp and Jerry Lewis!), and move into stranger and more personal works like Black Cat, White Cat. They still deal with Kursturica's big theme of fathers and sons transforming the world around them, and the younger generation being inexorably edged into following in their father's footsteps, but they're less and less grounded in tangible reality (and damningly have less of an 'important' point to make), whilst still not quite reaching the level of (arguably his closest comparison figure) Jodorowsky.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sun Aug 13, 2017 5:01 am, edited 5 times in total.

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knives
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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#44 Post by knives » Mon Jun 26, 2017 7:23 am

That's interesting to hear from someone with more experience. I wouldn't have thought of Jodorowsky, but that makes a lot of sense especially in light of his recent autobiographies.

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domino harvey
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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#45 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jun 26, 2017 9:35 pm

Two lists in and the due date is Saturday, July 1st. Mine will be an eventual third. Friendly reminder that if I don't receive at least ten ballots, I declare the Cannes List Project aborted and we never speak of it again, with the exception of those times we speak of it

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#46 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Jun 27, 2017 5:39 pm

I wasn't able to participate much in this list project - which was a disappointment given the number of sorely missing titles I could have used the excuse to catch (including The Leopard, Kagemusha, 4 Months..., The Class) - and the top of my list ended up looking a lot like my recent All-Time List submission. I don't know how much this would have changed if I'd been able to add 10-15 titles to the list I'd seen given the stature of some of those films, but I wonder if others are experiencing the same given the fair amount of overlap between the lists.

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#47 Post by TMDaines » Tue Jun 27, 2017 6:19 pm

I'll be submitting but late on.

If anyone wants Muzi bez krídel (1946) with English subs, I can help.

Ditto for I protagonisti (1968) for the side project.

Would have liked to have many more of the films from that year, so can't really submit for that.

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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#48 Post by Shrew » Wed Jun 28, 2017 1:30 am

I’ll be sending in a list, but not till Friday. For what it’s worth, I’m at 67/93 and hoping to hit at least 70 by the end (and 6/28 for 1968, which probably isn’t going to budge). I expect that’s on the high side though, so people should definitely submit even if they’ve only seen a handful of the films.

Padre Padrone—I watch of lot of films in parts over two nights—sometimes because I’m tired, sometimes because I can’t take that much of the film in one sitting. The latter is the case here. As knives noted, the beginning of this film is brutal, and I turned it off shortly after the sex montage. Fortunately, the film lets up on the degradation and gets into more complex ideas of class, region, literacy, and modern identity.

The Ballad of Narayama---Speaking of rural degradation, Imamura goes down easier for me than the Tavianis, but I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the more comic tone, or Imamura’s general empathy toward weirdos? Or just that the misery runs throughout, and not just jammed into the first 30 minutes. However, I think I prefer Kinoshita’s version of this tale, which elevates it to high tragedy, whereas this is more like an ethnographic investigation into the structural roots of Japan’s collective culture. Still, this is a rich film, and probably a better representation of Imamura than The Eel.

The Best Intentions—The first half is a Masterpiece Theatre version of Ingmar Bergman. It’s recognizable, but the edges have been sanded down. Close-ups remain but they are no longer so aggressive; the effusive monologues have been cut short; the actors stick to a safer, more leveled range. This is most particularly felt in the opening scene, which is far too mannered. Yet the second half finds… something else, something of its own.

I didn’t expect to like this one so much, especially given my lukewarm to reaction to Pelle the Conqueror. For me, the turning point is the montage about 2 hours in, which is a wonderful combination of condensed narrative and poetry. So much more effective than showing us endless scenes of Anna trying to make the best of it but bemoaning her lot all the while.

The scenes in the north are also by far the freshest; Fanny and Alexander haunts the scenes in Uppsala, mostly to the detriment of this latter film. I appreciate that this is in part a correction to Fanny in which Bergman’s father is vindicated (or at least distanced from the cruelty of the Bishop) and class examined. This is in many ways a more adult and complicated film, but I yearn for childish things (and the riches of Nykvist). However, I do like the directly contrasting quote of the Christmas party, and that Uncle Carl seems to have at last found peace in napping. Also, it’s got a hell of a final shot.

Also, while I’m going to be a bad juror and only see a fraction of the 1968 films, I’m still going to vote for The Fireman’s Ball, which is equally lively and biting. This was the best shot at the Czech New Wave getting recognition at Cannes, and this is my favorite of the bunch. The only other film I’d consider is The Red and the White, but it’s something I admire more than love.

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TMDaines
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Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#49 Post by TMDaines » Wed Jun 28, 2017 5:33 am

The 1968 lineup is incredible on paper, but I chose to focus on the main project.

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#50 Post by knives » Wed Jun 28, 2017 7:47 am

Honestly you just gave why I prefer the Imamura.

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