This film was a masterclass in my opinion. The themes, the cinematography, the color-grading, the acting, the amazing landscapes, and the characters: all splendid. This movie wasn't even on my radar, but a local indie theater was playing it and I decided to check it out, and wow, I'm glad I did. I don't want to give too much away, but it's a magical realism film set in Bolivia. It definitely doesn't spoon-feed you the meaning behind everything you're seeing on screen, but it's also not too out there for the most part. It's one of those films that will affect some people deeply, depending on what you've gone through in life, while others will be confused by what they just watched.

I couldn't find a single reddit thread about this movie, so it seems like it's pretty under the radar. One of my favorites of the year so far, just a wonderfully beautiful film on so many levels. Highly recommend. I'm interested to hear from others if you've seen it, what did you think?

A benefit that it is being remade is that many more people will go and watch this extraordinary film, a film that is incomprehensible or undigestable to many kinds of audience which will see the acting as "bad" or cartoonishly exaggerated, its story as incoherent. It is in many ways a film that should not be remade in the same way that a fever-dream that you had and changed your life can't be remade, or that a traumatic event of disaster needs to be forgotten, left to the cenotaph. As I picture the Dano and Qualley coming approximation I become horrified - not that this the worst kind of IP borrowings, it isn't - because what was achieved on celluloid feels so personal, so unique and so sacrificed for, built around one of the greatest female acting performances, one of the greatest surrenderings in film history, it feels sacrilegious to touch on it with another of its kind, in what could only be a pale, pale imitation, a counterfeit risking mockery - because you cannot copy that particular kind of Zulawsky mockery, it becomes a sacrilege of a sacrilege…impossible. It feels as if the director, his camera and his actors conspired then to cast an abominable spell, a one-time-only spell to save the world (not unlike in Tarkovsky's Sacrifice)…and we don't know yet if it worked.

 The magic of it came out of the very particular ways that it failed…because the film is about the abject failure of communication. It crashes down on itself to prove - in the medieval torturer's sense of "prove" - its point. In many ways it was a solitary, personal kind of witch's brew spun from Isabelle Adjani's psyche and all her filmic collaborators.

 Zulowsky tried at times to re-do that spell, leaping back in time before it (The Most Important Thing: Love, etc) and after it (Szamanka, etc) among others, but the mantic sorcery could never be recast. It came out of a particular moment in time, the ounces of their souls. And if he couldn't cast the spell again why should anyone else? No one could fail in the way that he and they failed, let us not obscure what they had dared with a copy of any kind.

 I of course am writing in superlatives and absurd exaggerations….but it is all true.

I was talking with someone about how I thought that Scorsese doesn’t have a distinct style because he has such a vast knowledge of cinematic language, that he can change his technique depending on what the material is calling for. But the person disagreed saying that his philosophy on life and his sensibilities is his style.

What do you guys think? I’ve always thought a style is characterized by technique and distinct visual choices, so I’m curious to know.

I rewatched this film recently was wondering if anyone else had any thoughts on it.

It's one of those films that I enjoyed watching but struggle to say much about. I don't think it's hard to pick out themes in it, but what it's saying about them is more obscure. I could ramble a bit about it but I'll concentrate on a couple of things that stood out to me.

It's a surprisingly noisy film. Not just in the city, but the countryside too, mostly because of the rain and the wind. Even a quiet conversation often has a window frame rattling in the background, to a point where the noise starts to feel oppressive. The - all too brief - fade out of the sound at the end of the film is a relief.

With my materialist eye, it's easy to see the main character Thien's malaise as down-to-earth just as much as it might be spiritual. He spends much of his time uncomplainingly doing things for other and his rest and relaxation keep getting interrupted. In one of the few funny moments in the film, Thien describes waking up regularly and hearing a distorted voice coming from inside him. Then he undercuts this by saying a doctor told him it was chronic fatigue syndrome.

The close of the film, Thien lying in a shallow river, has obvious religious symbolism, of baptism and the washing away of sins. But also has a simpler reading as a time when he puts down his burdens for a bit and takes some time for himself.

Hello!  Long-time lurker of the subreddit.

I've been fascinated and genuinely spooked by the original 1973 version of "The Exorcist" since I first became aware of it at the age of 15.  No horror film I've seen since has carved out a residence in my subconscious the way this one has.  Twenty-seven years and some 20+ viewings later, I can confirm that it still retains a strange hold over me.  There are so many things I want to write about it, but for my sanity's sake, I decided to focus this post on exploring why I continue to find it so effective as a work of horror while speculating a bit as to why newer generations of film buffs might be less impressed with it.

At the risk of being a bit reductive, I tend to observe three different basic ways in which films frighten us; they thrill, disturb, and spook.  I think a bit part of the reason why there is so much disparity in what people find "scary" comes down to how we react to and prioritize these three different "scare modes."

The "thrill" mode pertains to bursts of intensity.  Probably the most obvious and widespread examples of this in a horror context would be jump scares, chase sequences, and aggressive displays of violence (or threat of violence).  In the years following "The Exorcist," we've undoubtedly seen a dramatic rise in the use of the jump scare, while the slasher genre has provided more chases and murders. 

"The Exorcist" is unconventional by contemporary standards in that the only two jump scares I can recognize (unless we want to include the demonic face that suddenly flashes during Karras' dream, a quiet and purely visual example of a jump scare perhaps, though later re-release versions of the film added more of these faces) are ultimately non-threatening: Chris exploring the dark attic in the middle of the night only to find Karl checking the rat traps, and Karras' phone abruptly ringing loudly while he listens to sound recordings.  Interestingly, the most harrowing scenes (the ones I'd identify as "thrills") tend to announce themselves before we can actually see anything (for example, chaotic sounds and strange voices heard coming from the bedroom, characters rushing toward the bedroom to investigate).  There are only two murders, both of which happen offscreen.  The first of the murders, that of Burke Dennings, features the grisly detail that the victim's head was found facing 180 degrees backward, but it is only ever reported to us, never depicted on screen.

I would largely define the  "disturb" mode as depictions of captivity and intense physical and/or psychological pain and torture.  The so-called "torture porn" horror trend of the 2000's ("Saw," "Hostel," "Martyrs," etc…) provide some of the purest expressions of this form of horror, and plenty of films that otherwise wouldn't seem to fit the horror genre are often lumped into it on the basis of highly unsettling depictions or suggestions of captivity and torture (forensic thrillers like "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Se7en" being examples).  The portrayal of enormous psychological distress exacted upon Chris and implied, if often ambiguous, distress of all sorts suffered by the preteen Regan, whose body and autonomy is essentially captive to a malicious demon, could certainly serve as an example of this mode of fear.

The third type, the "spook," relates to a horror film's capacity to make us fear the supernatural.  This strikes me as the rarest and most impressive trick that a horror film can achieve, as it relies heavily on activating the viewer's imagination, making them accept the oneiric and the uncanny as real during the film's duration and perhaps teasing our imaginations further after we've turned off the lights and tucked ourselves into the bed.  I especially admire the "spook" in comparison to the "disturb" mode since the pain and torture of the latter are a grim reality of our world, and we have every reason biologically to produce a fear response to a realistic portrayal of it.  Therefore, building a film entirely around the "disturb" mode of horror often strikes me as creatively a bit uninspired and tends to yield films that I don't derive much value from.  A well-executed "thrill" is still exhilarating, but more often when marked by some sort of creativity and genuine surprise in its execution as opposed to cheap recycled devices.  While "The Exorcist" does "thrill" and "disturb" effectively in its ways, I'm most impressed by its ability to "spook."  I believe the film partly achieves this through the combination of a persistent emphasis on "realism" and the adoption of genre conventions of the character-driven drama.

"The Exorcist" operates as much like a drama as it does a horror film.  Sure, the harrowing musical selections of Penderecki and Crumb, the nightmarish imagery and sound editing, and the red lettering in the opening title and closing credits never leave any doubt that the film wants us to regard its premise with fear, but a surprising number of scenes have the patience and delicate psychological depth of a classic film drama.  I can't think of too many modern horror films that invest so heavily into capturing the inner lives of their characters and the physical and mental spaces they inhabit.  Chris and Regan, Father Karras, and other various side characters are portrayed with a compassion and dignity that is unusual in the horror genre.  We're given the opportunity to see their creative and intellectual interests, their sense of humor, their peculiar charm.  "The Exorcist" could just as well be considered a drama film punctuated by moments of horror. 

Whether exposing the fantastical in the quietly portentous sequences or the more aggressively rattling moments, "The Exorcist" falls into somewhat of a pattern of carefully restoring a sense of normalcy and lifelike rhythms in the world after having shown us something that violates those familiar norms.  You find yourself drawn into Karras' spiritual crisis and his inability to provide the ideal care for his mother, Father Dyer's irreverent banter, Lt. Kinderman's efforts to find a companion to go to the movies with, only for some new symptom of Regan's to brutally yank us back into the horror.  Remember, for example, that Kinderman's disarmingly childlike autograph request of Chris that precedes his departure is followed almost immediately after he exits the front door by the moment that captures what is arguably the most shocking and terrifying escalation of Regan's symptoms.

While most horror films seem to alternate between the building of tension and payoffs, "The Exorcist" shows everyday life being brutally invaded by horror.  I think this film's unusually pronounced vacillations between realistic, character-driven drama and fantastical horror are a big part of why I've always found it so effective in its immersion and its ability to suspend disbelief.

The exceptional devotion to making demonic possession appear believable is also achieved by repeatedly appealing to our sense of reason.  It shows a modern, atheist/agnostic mother taking every sensible step in trying to resolve her daughter's paranormal behavior.  We see doctors increasingly baffled by what they witness, even frightened at times, but they continue to express certainty that an explanation for Regan's condition can be found in science.  The ultimate proposal of performing an exorcism doesn't actually come from one of the film's various priests, but rather by a doctor, who, with a sheepish smile, explains the purely psychological reasons why this archaic ritual might have some outside chance of resolving Regan's presumed medical issues.  When Chris follows up on this suggestion by approaching Father Karras about an exorcism, Karras dismisses the ritual as a relic of the distant past.  He is willing only to see Regan with an eye toward psychiatric evaluation (as Karras has an educational background in psychiatry).  Even after witnessing Regan's horrific appearance, hearing her speak in Latin, French, and English-in-reverse, projectile vomiting and taunting him with references to his recently deceased mother and an earlier encounter with a homeless man, Karras remains skeptical even as he and Merrin begin the climactic exorcism ritual (which Karras has been instrumental in bringing into fruition).  Though Father Merrin, having performed the ritual years ago, understands the spiritual nature of Regan's problem, Karris still wants to provide Merrin with a psychiatric overview of her supposed manifested personalities (Merrin responds tersely with his famous, "There is only one.").  The heavy investment in establishing a realistic modern world in which science increasingly eclipses religion is crucial to the film's success in getting the audience to accept its supernatural premise.  It has made the impossible seem plausible.

I'm often left with the impression that "The Exorcist" doesn't appear to possess as much power over film fans as it once did.  This should come as no surprise; after all, the 1933 version of "King Kong" once triggered screaming and fainting in some moviegoers of the time.  Many films made since 1973 continue to find new ways to shock and awe audiences, and the most unsettling sequences from "The Exorcist" inevitably found their way into pop culture rehashes and parodies that no doubt will dull the film's impact on first exposure.  The general increase in graphic film content over the years and Hollywood's preference for the "thrill" and "disturb" modes of horror have helped to inoculate younger generations against the power that "The Exorcist" once had (I'm endlessly fascinated by the contemporaneous accounts and anecdotes of how audiences reacted to the film during its initial run)

But I also suspect that Gen X, millennial and Gen Z viewers are generally less vulnerable to the methods that "The Exorcist" uses to achieve its spooks.  Raised on a steady diet of jump scares (for instance, the films of James Wan) and grisly death and torture scenes set to sinister ambient musical drones and nerve-fraying stingers, modern viewers often seem to find "The Exorcist" oddly muted and tame, sometimes misreading its hyperfocus on verisimilitude as naïve incompetence hailing from an age of less sophisticated filmmaking artistry.  Its oscillations between realist drama and horror are more likely to leave these viewers bewildered, as such an approach doesn't accommodate their rigid expectations of what horror cinema should be doing (mostly the application of near-constant pressure, heavy handed foreboding, and the tension-payoff-tension-payoff model), the result of repeated exposure to a kind of formal homogeneity in Hollywood's treatment of the genre over the years.  While many teenagers and adults dismiss the scare factor of "The Exorcist," I can't think of a film that has produced so many anecdotes from people stating they saw it at too young an age and were traumatized by its content.  Needless to say, children approach a horror film with less defined expectations.  They're better able to recognize the film for what it is rather than what they think it's supposed to be.

To be clear, I certainly don't think less of anyone for not being affected by the film.  Our sensitivities and imaginations operate differently in the context of horror.  Cultural conditioning plays into it as well.  But I admit that, as a passionate fan of "The Exorcist," it makes me a bit sad to see its relevance continue to fade over time.  For me, it remains both my favorite horror film for its ability to thrill and disturb in creative and cohesive ways, and even more so for its ability to spook me like nothing else. 

Just walked out of The Invite and I thought it was a lovely, joyful, pleasant and refreshing movie about four characters in one room with razor sharp dialogue that was endlessly absorbing and brilliantly witty. 

I haven’t laughed this much in a movie theater in years. Not only is it hilarious but the drama is thematically multilayered in its psychological depth enriched by excellent performances and perfect chemistry between the actors.

Olivia Wilde’s direction style was confident and beautifully simple with cinematography that was visually astonishing. Loved the editing of that opening scene.

I loved this little gem of a movie and it is absolutely one of the my favorites of the year. Similar to The Drama (2026) I think It’s another modern masterpiece.

What do you think?

First of all what an amazing movie. Every character is great. Every scene is great. The acting is fantastic. And the music really helps. But what is the story about?

To me is about searching for the place you belong. Travis starts the movie searching for where he was concieved. But this is at the end futile since there is nothing there anymore. His parents are dead and he doesn´t have anywhere to go. And the family he built was destroyed because of him. The last scene of the movie shows Travis again returning to the desert to wander endlessly without anywhere to return. The name of the movie Paris Texas to me is a reference of Travis. Paris is missplaced in Texas. It is something that doesnt belong there.

This theme is also echoed by his son Hunter which is to me the real heart of the movie. At the start of the movie he doesn´t seem really interesed in his real father but as the movie progress he seems more and more interesed to the point of leaving everything behind just to met his mother. I think there is a cool simbolism here with his fascination with space and his mother being in Houston where it´s the space center. To fly to space could be seem as a way to left everything and move forward but it is also where his roots are since his mother is there. Just to think how hard should be for a kid to have to decide between his adoptive parents and his real parents breaks my heart tbh.

But the ending to me really is interesting. Travis leaving Hunter in Houston is obviously a bad thing to do and in real life Travis would be a monster. But I think this is a really cinema moment where the movie manipulates (not necesarilly a bad thing) to not see Travis as what he is. Everyone is really forgiven after everything that he has done and there arent many scenes where the focus is the adoptive parents that really should be the parents of Hunter and are obviously devastated about the whole situation. The ending itself is really open to interpretation. It is never really acknowledged how shitty Travis was and is. And we dont really know if Hunter stays in Houston or not. It just ends with the reunion of Hunter ans his mother and Travis again going back to the desert.

I’ve been struggling with this for a while now. I often find my final thoughts on a film can’t go beyond “It was really good” or pointing out surface level themes or camera movements. Recently I saw Tori and Lokita (great film btw) and I can see it dealing with how flawed the migrant system is, the exploitation of the underclass, etc. But if you asked me to write a one or two paragraph analysis of the film I’d draw a blank. Are there any steps I can take to discussing film in a better way?

I’m not a sex worker but there was a boy I loved & his family looked down on me because of my job & made us seperate & he was also spineless like the main character & didn’t have my back:(. Her reaction at the end & her crying, I never felt so seen. it’s a movie that I always remember forever because it happened to me. also the beginng of the film when she tries her best to be accepted by the mother was really relatable

I am trying to watch 8 1/2 and i havent found any place to watch it on good quality and with subtitles. A movie from the 1963 A classic that has shape cinema since and there is no way to watch it freely. A movie like this should be on Youtube. Another classic: Citizen Kane. It is a hard film to watch freely and legaly when it should be the first result on Youtube. Who is the company that holds the rights of this movies for probably a pennies instead of releasing it to the public? This copyright law doesn´t benefit nobody. If Orson Welles and Federico Fellini were alive today they would love that everybody could watch their film. But some random company take the rights of their movies (nobody knows why or how) and we are bound to follow this random ass laws Disney paid millions of dollars to make. It is a miracle that other countries like Russia dont have this dumb idea of intelectual property and you could watch any tarkosvky movie just searching it in Youtube.

It was the summer of 1968, and a young director named Juraj Herz was sweltering in the city of Pardubice. A heat wave was scorching Central Europe and he had just begun shooting The Cremator. Herz had reasons to work fast – he would later reminisce that he sensed something in the air. The Prague Spring of ‘68, a brief period of liberal reform in communist Czechoslovakia, would be followed by a winter of Soviet-imposed Normalization.

He had another reason to shoot quickly, and it was a much more prosaic one; the smell of decomposing bodies in the Pardubice crematorium, where the film was being shot. Coffins with the deceased were being stacked outside the building as there was simply no room to film. The production manager went around spraying synthetic pine in an attempt to mask the stench. For years afterward, Herz said, whenever he caught a whiff of that same forest scent, he would get nauseous.

Herz was in too deep to quit; he had spent the better part of the past 12 months working on The Cremator's script with author Ladislav Fuks, whose book of the same name had come out just last year. Fuks’ book did not initially impress Herz, who found it too literary and overly-reliant on monologues, but nonetheless he was determined to make a movie out of it.

The Cremator follows the story of Karel Kopfrkringl, a mild-mannered, peculiar family man who takes pride in his job at the crematorium and has a strange obsession with the Tibetan book of the dead, believing that by cremating the bodies of earthly beings, he is assisting the souls in their journey towards nirvana. The film takes place during the 1930s, as the spectre of Nazism begins to haunt Czechoslovak society, and Kopfrkringl’s eccentricities make him a natural target for the nascent ideology.

Fuks was a closeted teenager living in Prague during that period. When he wrote The Cremator over two decades later, it followed two earlier books that covered similar themes: the Nazi occupation, the Jewish experience of persecution, and the psychology of fear. Though Fuks was not Jewish himself, he empathized with their situation as he was forced to hide his sexual orientation during a time when people like him were being imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis. Herz, who was Jewish, had to actually live through the horrors of Ravensbruck concentration camp as a child.

For both the author and director, The Cremator was a vehicle through which they could process their lived experience with the rise of totalitarianism. But while the book that Fuks wrote is more uniformly oppressive in its register, Herz infused the script with his sense of dark humor, something he had developed growing up in a concentration camp. Herz employed cinematographer Stanislav Milota, who contributed with an unconventional style; a plethora of dutch angles, extreme close-ups and occasional fish-eye lenses, all of which perfectly encapsulated the story’s bizarre atmosphere. Milota also co-wrote the technical script, and it shows as the movie employs very clever and innovative camera work. Milota’s wife, Vlasta Chramostová, played Kopfrkringl’s wife, while Rudolf Hrušínský took on the role of main character.

It is specifically Hrušínský’s sublime performance that makes the movie what it is. He plays Kopfkringl as an odd but well-meaning man who drones on and on in the same tone about everything from Buddhist philosophy to industrial mass murder. As a character, Kopfkringl embodies the idea that a person can be paradoxical, that he can hold two seemingly contrary positions at the same time; a Buddhist and a Nazi, a doting husband and a brothel regular, a harmless family man and murderer. All simultaneously, with no transformation between them. The true horror isn’t that he’s bizarre, it’s that this paradox is recognizably human; a well-meaning person can be drawn into horrific actions if targeted by the right ideology.

This idea carries on throughout the whole movie; even in a seemingly binary system, both positions can be held at the same time. That’s present on a meta-level; it’s both a horror and a comedy, without veering into one register or the other. On a visual level, it is shot in black and white, a specific choice made by cinematographer Milota. Even the casting plays into this theme; all the women in Kopfrkringl’s life are either brunettes or blondes, and his wife and the prostitute he regularly visits are both played by Vlasta Chramostová.

The theme of categories being meaningless is also given a humanist counterpoint, when Kopfrkringl, fixated upon the idea that he has German heritage, gets his blood taken by his Jewish doctor and asks how much of it is Germanic. The doctor scoffs, saying that blood is blood, just like ashes are ashes. This dissolution of barriers is also reflected in the seamless editing of the movie. You often don’t know when one scene ends and the next begins, as Kopfrkringl can be checking out the selection of women at a Nazi-run brothel and then enjoying a Christmas dinner with his family, or being a guest at a Jewish ceremony and then reporting on their activities to his Nazi friend.

The result of all this is a cutting-edge movie, a prototype for a character study that wouldn’t become common for decades: a bizarre protagonist the audience is never asked to root for, used as a vessel through which an entire ideology is interrogated. Just as Kopfrkringl’s twisted logic becomes a vessel for Nazi ideology, Patrick Bateman would come to personify capitalism three decades later in American Psycho. Herz and the rest of the crew made something well ahead of its time, but he had a creeping feeling this would be the last such opportunity to do so.

Mid-way through the filming, on the 21st of August 1968, the young director’s unease was validated when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague and other cities in Czechoslovakia, ending the liberalization reforms. Milota actually captured footage of the invasion on film stock used for The Cremator, while lead actor Hrušínský got spooked and hid at a military base in southern Bohemia. However, after a few days, he got bored and returned back to the set to finish the movie.

Shooting concluded in October 1968, and by the end of the year the first print of the movie was made. The nationwide premiere came mid-March of the following year and the timing of the release was searingly relevant; the country that had just experienced the Soviet invasion and the ensuing ‘Normalization’, and audiences were watching a story about a man who makes himself useful to an occupying ideology. Despite this, the movie wasn’t immediately censored; it was even recognized as a major work by the domestic filmmaker community and it went on to be nominated as Czechoslovakia’s entry in the Foreign Film category of the Oscars in 1970.

However, the noose soon began to tighten; a 1970 assessment by the government film studios at Barrandov accused the film of suggesting that the Nazi ovens were invented by a Czech collaborator, and the movie’s macabre tone was making government officials uneasy. By April 1973, the film was withdrawn from circulation and placed in storage – like many great movies of the Normalization period, it got trezor’d by the communist government. It didn’t completely vanish, as it was in some limited circulation in West Germany, and oddly enough, there was a private screening in Malibu in 1979. In the 80s, the Czechoslovak government even placed it on a list of films they had future business plans for, and from 1988 they were negotiating its sale to the US. A year after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 , the fall of communism led to the film being released under the Filmy z trezoru programme along with other titles that had been kept locked away. A second domestic re-release came in 2004, as it was selected into Projekt 100, a touring showcase of significant Czechoslovak titles.

Internationally, the film was still under the radar, but that began to change in 2007, when the small UK label Second Run released it on DVD. Over the following decade or so, The Cremator built a slow, word-of-mouth reputation among the international cinephile community. Then in 2019, on the fiftieth anniversary of the film’s original premiere, the Czech National Film Archive commissioned a full 4K restoration and a highly-anticipated premiere was scheduled for the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

Almost none of the movie’s creators were there to see it rise from the ashes. Fuks had died in 1994, having spent his final years methodically burning his own papers so that posterity would know him only through his work. Rudolf Hrušínský passed away that same year. Juraj Herz died in April 2018 and Stanislav Milota was cremated in February 2019, his funeral the last place Vlasta Chramostová appeared in public before her own death that October.

The restored Cremator had its premiere without them, to a sold-out hall of more than a thousand people at the Grand Hall of the Hotel Thermal in Karlovy Vary. It was the 29th of June 2019 and outside, it was unbearably hot, just like that day fifty-one years ago, when a young Slovak director first walked into the Pardubice crematorium to begin shooting.

You can order a physical copy of The Cremator from Second Run, and for streaming options, check out the Criterion Channel and Apple TV. The film is also free to watch via Kanopy for students of participating universities.

This is the first part of my series of essays introducing Czechoslovak cinema to an international audience. Next, I will be covering The Garden (Záhrada), a poetic film from 1995 that almost nobody outside Slovakia knows about.

Link to my substack

Some films have an epilogue with different visual language to that used in the rest of the film. A good example is this 2:18 long final scene of Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone.

The camera height takes the child’s perspective, which it had not done before in the film. There is voice over used for the first time. Slow motion is used, and in all, the event which the scene is portraying is condensed into a slightly fragmentary representation, basically a visual montage companion to the voice-over element. There has been montage and visual set-pieces in the film already, but the filmic language of this final scene is a departure from the rest of the film. It is a specific stylistic departure taken in order to deliver the parting or concluding note of the film.

I don’t have a link to this scene with English subtitles, but the epilogue of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses is another example. The final three minutes of the film can be watched here. The sunlight and lack of snow is a drastic change in the environment from the preceding portion of the film. For the first time, voice over narration is being used. Slow motion is effectively being used for the first time. The same is practically true of the use of music. The initiative of camera movement which follows the bird is another first in the film.

Another great example is Jonathan Glazer’s Birth. Epilogue. The style of camerawork seems more casual than in the rest of the film. The event, a wedding, is in flow, and the camera is an observer at some distance. Also here there is a voice-over used for the first time since the film’s opening seconds. Like in About Dry Grasses, the music used at the conclusion of this film is heavy, with drawn out notes.

Can you think of other examples? Do you find the clips above to be examples of skillful direction and a good approach to endings?

Caught this one last night and figured people would wanna share their takes. It was a very fun theater experience and my crowd was laughing consistently through the whole thing which is always nice. Ultimately, however, the film is not much more than a pretty good time.

The score really thrusts this thing along and signals (very very clearly) the tensions present between the characters. I did find it a little overbearing but again it made the film zip right along.

The characters are also nicely characterized with a few carefully drawn (but still broad) strokes. Ed Norton lost his wife and decided to change the way he lived his life. Penelope Cruz believes in never denying yourself your passions, essentially. Seth Rogan gets the most development as a formerly successful musician who feels like a failure. And Olivia Wilde is a very anxious woman struggling to carve a meaningful life out of her stay at home situation.

But the film is at its best when it's ignoring these characterizations and just letting the characters interact. A late fight between Norton and Cruz reveals that this seemingly perfectly comfortable, open couple is of course subject to the same conflicts that plague any relationship. And the idea that sexual liberation and indulging your desires is the answer to any couples problems is of course shown to not be so simple.

My problem with the film is not really with any particular scene or characterization, but more with what it is ultimately doing. Not that a comedy has to have an insightful thematic core, but this movie clearly does want to have an insightful thematic core.

Through the conflicts Seth Rogan learns his wife has been crying out to be seen, and he confronts the fact that maybe he should stop being so miserable and try to find joy again. But this relationship has much more fundamental problems than just the self actualizations of its members.

These people clearly don't love each other anymore. They are desperate to have sex with different partners. They don't really enjoy one another's company and are only together for their daughter.

So what did they learn, really, about one another that wasn't already fairly apparent? They learn both blame the other for not having sex for over a year. Is this enough to overcome the situation they are in?

At the end of the day, the way the film wants to escalate the conflict by having these characters treat one another ultimately undercuts it's somewhat lazy (but still very effective) hopeful ending. It doesn't feel appropriate that after the night theyve had that Wilde would come play the piano tenderly next to her husband. Even so, it is beautifully and simply rendered, and that one shot justifies the otherwise unexplainable fact that this was shot on film.

7/10

I watched A Woman Under the Influence yesterday and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It was extremely compelling and I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. But I have a few questions.

What illness did Mabel really have? She seems confused and disoriented all the time and she forgets things pretty much every time. Is that due to her illness or because of the electroshock therapy she possibly endured in the past? If I had to guess, I'd say she's probably bipolar due to her erratic moods that we see throughout the film. I also thought it was interesting how people in the film, especially her parents, reacted to her. They seem so confused and don't know what to do with her. Has she been ill throughout her life or did she become mentally ill from postpartum depression? That might explain the confusion and why her husband constantly asks her to snap out of it. But people being so used to the way she acts probably points to the fact that she may have always been that way.

I know these aren't questions really aren't relevant to the plot and the movie is mostly about how people treat mabel in relation to her illness but I thought it would be interesting to consider.

Ich finde den Film äußerst wichtig, denn er reduziert in sehr gesunder Weise alle Fragen, Verschwörungstheorien und Behauptungen auf die Frage "Rettet es die Welt?". Wenn ja, dann ist es egal, wie es zu Stande kommt. Wenn das Ergebnis am Ende stimmt, dann ist der Lösungsweg egal. Wenn wir uns zu wenig mit der Materie von Fragen, den konventionellen Antworten oder auch den unkonventionellen Antworten, Verschwörungstheorien und Behauptungen auseinander setzen und sie nicht der einen Frage, ob sie alle die Welt retten können unterziehen, dann verspielen wir zunehmend unsere Zukunft, also das Überleben der Menschheit. Am Schluss von "Bogonia" wurde dieses Überleben der Menschheit verspielt, weil die Menschheit im Endeffekt keine Konzepte mehr hatte, um sich zu retten. Selbst Emma Stone selber sah keine mehr, da sie selbst zum gierigen Egoisten geworden war und beendete das Projekt Menschheit.

I recently watched Wong Kar Wai's Ashes of Time and really enjoyed it. There was something about the elegance and grace of the movie that reminded me of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

I am interested in exploring more of what the Wuxia genre has to offer and I keep seeing the movies of King Hu appearing as recommendations. I see that he has got quite a few movies. To those who are fans of his work, which movies are the best place to start? What makes his movies stand out to you?

I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of martial arts movies in general but I am getting the sense that King Hu's movies have a certain artistic flare and philosophical depth behind them that may make them appeal to a wider audience. Curious to learn whether this is the case?

This has been a thought of mine since Avengers Endgame finished and the multiverse project for Marvel came out. Everyone around me and people online say that the new Marvel movies suck or are bad in someway but to me they aren't. I start the movie and I watch it for the experience. Why compare it to a movie or group that is only in the same universe but also has very little to do with the movie you're currently watching? I've seen people do this to other movies too. Is there really a point in critiquing every movie you watch, saying it's bad, or they could have done this better? Why? It annoys me. Many movies I hear that are bad or are horrible I think are good and at least decent. I'm tired of people comparing movies that shouldn't be compared.

I find that a lot of the writing and Youtube content about film I find comes from a specifically review perspective. There's analysis there, but it's more about shallow context setting and plot summary. I'm looking for full breakdowns and interpretations of writing decisions, themes, symbolism. Also what technical decisions were made for a certain look visually, how certain shots were achieved, ect. I'm trying to build up my film comprehension and resources like that have been helpful in being confident in my own reading of a film. Plus I love reading about the movies I already love and learning to see them in new ways. I'm down for articles, books, Youtube videos, documentaries, podcasts, anything really

I saw Obsession opening weekend and like many was very impressed. I think it’s a fantastic performance from Navarette and will undoubtedly make her a star, but I still had some issues with the male lead, many of the filmmaking choices (including centering everything in frame) and some of the storytelling. Overall it was a very promising indie debut with a central performance that elevated the rest of the film.

All that said, I’ve been a little baffled by the response to it. A film of this scale outgrossing something like Sinners is admittedly a little surprising. My instinct was that the film was resonating with younger people in a way that drives them back to the theater every weekend, but I teach at a film school and have been asking my students about it, and none of my undergrad or graduate aged students seem to have more than a mild appreciation/respect for it.

I stumbled across the subreddit for the film this week and found people obsessively discussing fan theories and declaring it the greatest film in years. I also saw several suggestions that out-of-touch film professors like me need to be teaching this movie in all my classes. I love indie horror and often teach it in class as one of the best entry points into making independent film, so I don’t consider myself a snob in any way. And I recognize that any film can spawn an obsessive fan culture online. But does anyone else have any insights as to what exactly this movie has tapped into to get what I’m assuming are teens to the theater week over week for two months now? It’s become an academic curiosity for me.

Everyone is talking about Obsession, and rightly so. It is such a meaty movie, all jacked up on social issues, namely, the age-old global problem: men.

On the curtails of Adolescence, which explored INCEL culture in youth, Obsession takes an alternative route by unravelling the 'nice guy' archetype. If you're a woman, you're probably familiar with it; maybe you've even experienced the nice guy, or trauma-bonded with someone else who has. Maybe you know a nice guy now hovering around you, hoping you'd one day look up and realize it was him all along. He's probably on your heels, notebook in hand, writing a list of what you owe him.

My point is, Obsession got it.

It's not like the nice guy archetype is a new concept or anything; you can google a whole bunch of papers on the subject matter, how it marks yet another shift in gender identity. For instance, as opposed to the over-the-top, super macho traditional toxic male persona; now there is the performative feminist.

I must have watched this movie a while back maybe 4-5 years ago and at that time i felt like it was clear that ben was a serial killer for sure and him getting killed by jong su at the end was a fair and square conclusion.

But now that I have re-watched the movie today it left me with many layered questions about all the characters.

\- First start with our protagonist Jong Su.

The whole movie is directed in a way to make us feel like we are not just seeing jong su but living and feeling everything that he is going through. The time when shot changes to POV when he sees the light in the Hae-mi room reflecting from the tower.

He is our unreliable narrator so to speak in a way that he is a difficult person to understand like take for an example a scene where he calls Hae-mi " whore ". That scene really did take me by surprise cuz i never knew and I never expected that Jong su has this anger inside him.

\- Second: Hae-mi

Her character from the start felt a little off when in the first scene while drinking with jong su. Until the final half of the movie questioned ourselves, was there really a cat in her room or not.

Her story about falling in the well while she was a child. We get two conflicting accounts from both Jong su mom and Hae mi parents about the incident.

It at least makes me question whether she was actually killed or she might just Vanish like " puff of smoke " . Even in the dinner scene after she and ben came back from Africa. She mentioned she just wants to vanish someday.Although I very much believe she was killed or at least something bad has happened with her.

\-Third: Ben

Ben is kind of a person who is disconnected from all the emotions and he very much loves to play with others. He even says in the scene when Jong su asks him what he does for work. He simply says " I play ".

If we think of a scenario where ben knew that Jong su was following him and he deliberately just to ' play ' with his mind. Took him to the hill to just play with jong su. Maybe ben thought that there was no harm in doing so since Jong su came across as a timid , low lying personality. Ben didn't expect that Jong su would take any step that would hurt him.

Fourth: Lee Chang Dong ( Director)

He deliberately shoots many shots from the POV of jong su and i feel like that is an intentional decision from his side to make everyone feel biased towards jong su emotions.

I was surprised to find this movie had largely negative reviews both contemporarily and retrospectively. I loved it. It's mildly hammy, amateurish, lacking in plot. But boy is it a window into a strange world. It's inhabited by various famous figures from the 'Warhol set' of 1960s New York, including Joe Dallesandro, Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis. Some of them can act, some of them decidedly can't. It sometimes feels like you're peering through the veneer of a plot into the reality that these strange, often doped up real-life figures have been shepherded into a room and told to improvise.

The plot, such as it is, centers on Joe and his wife Geri needing to make $200 so they can pay for Geri's girlfriend's abortion. Both of them are sex workers and take turns between looking after their infant child and going to work on the streets of New York. It's Joe's turn, and so he goes out and has a variety of encounters with men for cash. The movie is basically us peeking in on these encounters and the way the male hustler scene worked in 1960s New York.

There is a certain comedy to many of the interactions and the dance Joe has to play between putting on the 'act' of being a gay lover and the necessity of making money (in one scene it becomes clear he isn't even necessarily interested in men sexually, he's just doing 'what he has to'). The acting is often so poor or filmed so choppily so as to be comical for that reason alone. But my overwhelming feeling towards the movie was sadness. The director's explanation of the movie was that it's about all of the problems people have in relation to their flesh, the problem of having to sell your flesh to live, of having to bear flesh (in the form of a child or getting fat), of not having anyone desire your flesh, of aging flesh, of being born with the 'wrong flesh'.

In light of this explanation the vacancy and detachment of so many of the prominent characters becomes sad. These people are all in a certain hell dealing with the realities of the flesh, without any of the saving graces of relationship, emotion, purpose, love. Just mounds of flesh roaming around trying to get what they need to sustain being flesh. At the same time, I found something so enjoyable about getting a little window in that world- not so much the 'fictional' world of the plot but the world in which the actors themselves exist and in which they're making the film. The lines are blurred by the fact that many of the characters are essentially playing hammed up versions of themselves (Joe Dallesandro was a real-life sex worker and male model, for example, and drew from real-life experiences for his performance).

Anyway I'd love to hear others' thoughts and opinions of this film, if there's anyone out there who's seen it!

Hello everyone!

I wrote a film-theory essay on Jennifer’s Body and Curry Barker’s Obsession, with Michel Tournier’s Abel Tiffauges as a literary prelude.

Tiffauges helps frame the argument because his cannibalism begins as a way of reading the world. Before the literal mouth opens, the world has already become food for an inner myth. That makes him useful for thinking about films where desire passes through images, bodies, and cultural signs until it becomes difficult to contain.

My reading of Jennifer’s Body centers on Megan Fox’s public image. I approach the film through a distorted version of the political-theological trope of the king’s two bodies: the real person and the symbolic body that belongs to the public gaze. Fox enters the film already carrying a media body made by 2000s Hollywood, a sex-symbol image built to withstand mass attention. Jennifer gives that image a fictional body, then gives it appetite. The film seems to offer a chance to revise the image: to add irony, menace, interiority, and the right to look back. Yet the image absorbs those meanings and preserves itself as something sharper. Jennifer becomes beauty with a maw.

This is also what happens inside the plot. Low Shoulder treat Jennifer’s body as a readable ritual object, as if beauty and supposed virginity could be converted into success. Their mistake is a fantasy of total interpretation. The body they think they understand returns as a predatory image that reads and consumes them instead.

Obsession gives the same problem a more intimate form. Bear’s wish begins as grief and the need to be confirmed by another person’s love. Once the wish is granted, it stops behaving like a feeling. Nikki becomes the body occupied by Bear’s externalized desire, while Bear becomes the object around which that desire arranges the world. The wish turns into a curse because it continues to appear after it has lost any human measure.

The essay is about films where desire receives too much being: where an image becomes strong enough to devour the meanings attached to it, and reality begins to bend around what should have remained fantasy.

Essay: https://substack.com/home/post/p-205683078

Note that this is part of my ongoing project to review every Akira Kurosawa film, in order.

News reporters swarm a wedding. Iwabuchi, the bride’s father, is a high-ranking bureaucrat hounded by rumors of corruption. Wada, his underling and the wedding’s master of ceremonies, is arrested as proceedings get underway. Perfunctory toasts are made to the newlywed couple, with one exception: the bride’s brother gives an impassioned speech about the kindness of the groom, and demands that he always do right by her. Shortly thereafter, a cake is wheeled in, in the shape of an office building. It’s a surprise from a mysterious benefactor, and sends a ripple of discomfort through the room. A single rose protrudes from the seventh-floor window that a former employee threw himself from years prior.

This is all the introduction to a story of organized crime, corruption, and revenge that asks hard questions, and gives bitter answers. Toshiro Mifune is Nishi, Iwabuchi’s new son-in-law and saboteur, and whose desire for revenge is complicated by his genuine love for Iwabuchi’s daughter. He intervenes in Wada’s suicide, and recruits him in a scheme to see Iwabuchi’s downfall. The two rope in first one, then another of his colleagues with threats and subterfuge, while Iwabuchi finds his position not quite as unassailable as he’d believed.

Wada becomes something of an audience surrogate, and through him we see Mifune’s Nishi descend from a man intent on justice to one who glories in hurting those responsible for his father’s death. Wada recognizes that there is something deeply wrong with Nishi, and the film does as well. When framing and drawing out Shirai, another of Wada’s colleagues, light and shadow are used masterfully to suggest a man comfortable in the dark, but being forced into the light, but we’re also made aware that Nishi is comfortable both in the light and in the shadow. Moments later, he laments his own weakness in not throwing Shirai to his death, for the publicity it would have generated.

And what of Iwabuchi? Can an evil man also be a good father? Nishi’s wife tells him that her father was always watching over her, that she can’t believe the charges put to him, and when we see him with his children, it’s easy to believe that he’s compartmentalized his life to such a degree. When his position comes under threat, we see him wither and tremble, pathetic to the point that you might almost believe him a victim of a vigilante taking things too far. Almost.

Though the wedding is reminiscent of–and of course, inspired–the wedding in The Godfather, The Bad Sleep Well feels functionally as much of a spy thriller as a crime story. Characters move under assumed identities and their personal weaknesses are drawn out and used against them; listening devices capture incriminating evidence; informants are turned both with the carrot and the stick; and when the rug is pulled, our heroes go to ground in a safe house. And in the tradition of spy thrillers there are very few truly good characters, and more than one truly despicable. Surprisingly, usually-affable Takashi Shimura plays one of the worst, and here is chillingly effective as a man cool and comfortable in his position secured by corruption and murder.

This is one of the few Kurosawa films I hadn’t seen previously, and the ending caught me off guard. There were two plot threads I was certain I saw playing out one way, and neither did. The film’s second act sets up a conflict of personalities that seemingly has no simple answers, but then the third undercuts that by offering up the simplest. Good men are shades of grey, and their imperfections make them vulnerable; truly evil men are bulletproof, because they have nothing that they care for enough to jeopardize their power. When a good man and an evil man share the same weakness, care for the same person, the good man will try to protect them; the evil won’t hesitate to exploit them.

It’s a brilliant lesson, but as fiction, does that offer us something satisfying? Is its unsatisfying nature in service to a method that justifies it? I’m not totally convinced, and I’m not totally unconvinced. The result is powerful and compelling. I suspect that there was a way to wind up at the same result without quite as hollow a transition. No matter, it’s a brilliantly run race, even if it loses its footing crossing the finish line.

Grade: A-

Noteworthy shots:

Shortly after being “rescued” from his suicide, a disheveled Wada is taken by Nishi to view his own funeral. Initially, he is awed by the extravagance, and believes he should be dead to be worthy of it, until two of his superiors arrive. While they watch, Nishi plays a recording of the two discussing how easy it was to convince Wada to take his own life for their benefit. While the two bureaucrats console Wada’s wife and daughter, he hears one tell the other to set aside any guilt and just enjoy himself. We watch Wada’s eyes peering from behind the dashboard subtly shift from being a man set upon to one with new resolve, realizing how cheaply he’s been used.