Discussion #234: The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short (De man die zijn haar kort liet knippen) (1965)

Director: André Delvaux

A film with such a promising premise but whose execution is so dismal that I cannot in good conscience recommend it. Senne Rouffaer stars as a teacher who is obsessed with one of his students who is about to graduate; there’s something so intriguing about characters who have feelings of forbidden attraction. Delvaux could have found a thousand ways to turn this into a juicy tale of unrequited love and obsession, but instead we get… whatever the hell this is.

After his target, Fran, graduates and moves away, we are force-fed a super random and unnecessary 20-minute segment where he goes to visit an autopsy. Later, he comments to Fran that he was disgusted by the autopsy but that if he hadn’t gone to it, he wouldn’t have seen her again; OK, but why did the scene have to be so long-winded, or full of so many inconsequential details? Even more time is spent with our main character wandering around pining after Fran until we finally get a meaty scene with the two of them. Even then, their dialogue is not what I expected at all; rather than being disgusted by the news that her former teacher lusted after her, she reveals that she loved him too… and then begs her to kill him. It’s too preposterous for me to take, and I wondered if this was part of some fantasy our main character was having.

Only at the end do we have a scene that feels somewhat worthy of our attention. Some years later, our main character is at a psychiatric institution, where his hair has been cut short; at the beginning of the film, he was having a haircut by choice but now it has been forced upon him; I enjoyed this late scene giving the title new meaning. Being shown a film reel, he sees footage of the woman he thought he shot dead. There’s a tense scene as he tries to find out if the film reel is recent, and chases down a ward staff member to find out the truth. This gives him the peace of mind to move on. All the same, Delvaux botches the ending by adding another random scene full of pointless verbal diarrhoea.

It seems very much as if the director was influenced by French New Wave, as there is a lot of train-of-thought narration and pseudo-philosophical babbling that is difficult to wade through. Despite its steamy and taboo premise, this is ultimately a very safe film that fails to deliver the goods. There’s a lot of filler that doesn’t add anything to the story, which makes me think the director padded it out to make the film feature-length; I wish Delvaux would have been the man that had his film cut short.

3/10

Discussion #233: Amores perros (2000)

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Before Crash came this far superior set of interwoven stories featuring an ensemble cast centred on a car crash. Iñárritu’s episodic framework may support some social commentary and thought-provoking themes but, first and foremost, it is wildly entertaining.

The dramatic spectacle of a car crash makes several worlds collide, from very different social spheres. The contrast of the dog fighting ring with the publisher’s swanky apartment, for example, is very striking. We see snarling, fighting dogs, car chases, a model losing the use of her legs, and therefore her career and an old hitman nursing a dog back to health. The events are far from ordinary, but rather than find them soapy or overdramatic, I am absolutely down for some exciting storytelling, especially when so many list films happen to be so ‘subtle’ and ‘nuanced’. This is quite the rollercoaster ride.

This is a stunning debut by director Iñárritu, who would go on to make Babel, Birdman and The Revenant. With a grittiness that prevents this wacky story from turning into a telenovela, he manages to pull off the very tricky job of juggling such disparate stories together in a way that imbues all three with similar and contrasting themes. It’s a bit like watching a 2½ hour magic trick being performed. Also featured is Gael García Bernal, who would go on to star in the following year’s Y tu mamá también, proving himself to be a rising star of the new wave of Mexican cinema.

9/10

Discussion #232: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Director: David Lean

Bum-dum-bum-dum drrrrum…

Those kettle drums that kick off this nearly-four-hour epic never fail to excite me. It’s true that this is a lot of time to commit to watching a single film, but when I saw that Netflix had the whole thing in 4K, I just couldn’t resist putting it on again.

When my dad bought Lawrence of Arabia as one of our family’s first DVDs, I remember being transfixed by the beauty of the desert, by the gargantuan scenes boasting hundreds of extras and by just how incredible the film looked, even if I probably couldn’t understand the plot all too well. I distinctly remember liking the film so much that I dived into all the DVD extras and listened to the commentary about how hard it was to complete the film; off the top of my head, I can remember that it was especially difficult to film a scene where a man has to walk towards a sun that peeps over the horizon as he’s walking away from the camera, how the quicksand scene was filmed by pulling the actor into a box buried beneath the ground, how it was difficult to avoid making footprints in the sand before shooting, how David Lean agonised over having the train fall off the rails in a way that wouldn’t be obscured, realising later that it looked even better with all the dust and lastly – in a way that shocked me as a child – that Peter O’Toole burst into a hotel bar after filming and exclaimed “the fucking picture’s finished!” It’s funny what stays with you, isn’t it?

But if the film looks good on DVD, then it’s absolutely enrapturing in 4K. Vast landscapes with the subjects as tiny specks are rendered all the more stunningly and detail on the clothes, buildings and surroundings come into sharp focus. Lean’s use of the 70mm format is extraordinary. If The Searchers ever did anything good, it was to inspire Lean to make such a beautiful film.

Whenever I’ve come back to this film, I find new ways to look at it, and it entrances me every time. As a child, it was to see the limits of film-making being pushed to their extremes. As part of my full list rewatch, I wanted to fully understand what the story was about. On my latest watch, I really wanted to study the man himself, or at least how he’s depicted by Lean. I’m aware that there are historical inaccuracies with the film and I honestly couldn’t care less. It doesn’t seem as if Lean was concerned with building an accurate portrait of T. E. Lawrence, and since I’m no expert on him either, why am I going to let the truth get in the way of a good story? The fact that this is even slightly based on real life tells me the man led a truly extraordinary life.

What I was most surprised about after my 2020 watch was that I had completely missed any notion that Lawrence was a gay man, a theme which Lean apparently tried to weave heavily into the film whilst not upsetting distributors. If you’re not looking for it, you won’t see it, but it was a lot of fun trying to imagine Lawrence and Ali’s relationship as being more of lovers than collaborators, especially towards the end of the film. It definitely gave the film a whole new slant, although I wouldn’t exactly call this a breakthrough for LGBT in cinema history.

Still, Lawrence’s journey through this film is fascinating. A misfit from the start, he finds more joy away from the fuddy-duddies in the British war office and with the Arabs, who seem to live a more adventurous life that appeals to him. With a naive personality and a young person’s belief that he is invincible, he takes on an administrative order and turns it into a campaign that ends up turning the entire Arab war around. 

Through perseverance and a little luck, he manages to get a small army of Arabs to Aqaba, which they conquer. This victory, coupled with new fame found amongst his followers and with the American newspaper, give him the sense that he is some sort of god that can do anything. It takes a brutal beating for him to realise he is just a man, and rather than take it as a small defeat, the mercurial Lawrence decides he’s done being Lawrence of Arabia and wants to get a lowly desk job. This points towards some personality defect, that he needs to either have it all or nothing. 

The British officers still need him, however, and push him to help take Damascus, despite his reluctance. Once again, he is filled with the spirit that he is a god amongst men, but it’s weaker now, since he has had to pay a fortune to have his new army follow him. Clearly in a mental conflict with his all-or-nothing point of view, he irrationally decides to participate in the slaughter of Turkish soldiers, feeding a sadistic side of him that he is fearful of.

The Arabs take Damascus but bicker when the British cut off the public utilities. Lawrence sees that his ‘heroic campaign’ was nothing more than a strategy by both Prince Faisal and the British to get what they want, leaving very few people satisfied. He hasn’t given the Arabs their freedom, he was just a pawn the entire time. Dejected, he returns to Britain, and eventually dies while riding too fast on a motorcycle, perhaps still filled with that sense that he’s invincible.

This is just my take on Lawrence’s psychology, of course, there could be dozens of others. At nearly four hours, there’s quite a lot of twists and turns to the story, and sometimes it can be hard to make the pieces fit, especially when Lawrence doesn’t behave like you’d expect him to.

But there’s so much more going on in this riveting drama, it’s hard to keep track of all of it. Along the way, Lawrence faces some personal setbacks that seem to do deep damage to his psyche. At one point he saves a man from dying on the Sun’s Anvil, only to shoot him dead a few scenes later when he breaks Arab law. Doing that must have felt conflictual to him, but he tells the British officers later that he enjoyed it. It’s really hard to fit this in with everything else he does, until the scene with the Turkish officers retreating from Tafas.

He also loses his two young companions along the way, after promising they will be safe with him. The first, he loses to quicksand, which seems highly unlikely in a dry desert, but hey-ho. A little glimpse of masterful direction from Lean is when the car carrying Lawrence and Farraj to Cairo stops abruptly waking up Farraj from a nightmare and he screams “Daud!” It wasn’t necessary for the story, but that short moment was like an injection of emotion and character into the film and was so well done.

I have to say, however, as much as I heap praise onto this film, I cannot give it a perfect score, because it is too uneven. Specifically, the shorter second half – after the intermission – doesn’t seem to have the same heft as the first half. The first part holds together as an adventure story with Lawrence discovering new aspects about himself and dangerously making his way across the desert. Every step logically connects to the next. Part II seems to move around more erratically. It’s a struggle to keep up with what’s supposed to be happening and Lawrence’s behaviour makes less and less sense. There’s also a lot more confusing politics that can be hard to fathom. Watching Lawrence of Arabia is like watching a film and its distinctly worse sequel back-to-back.

All the same, it’s presented beautifully. Lean’s stunning on-location desert cinematography – which would put the stagey sets of the following year’s Cleopatra to shame – is accompanied by Maurice Jarre’s gorgeous and catchy soundtrack, music that will stay with you for a lifetime. Unlike most features that last over three hours, it never feels like it outstays its welcome; if anything, the second half is too rushed, and could have used a few more expository scenes. Crucially, it doesn’t present just another classic Hollywood hero, and gives us the story of an idealistic but flawed individual who is profoundly affected by both his victories and successes, and the bitter – not sweet – ending to the film is far from what you’d expect from this sort of epic.

9.5/10

Discussion #231: Happy Together (春光乍洩) (1997)

Director: Wong Kar-wai

I seem to recall that one of my favourite Monty Python sketches involved John Cleese speaking German in an Australian accent. The absurdity of having something foreign manipulated by something else foreign was delightfully fascinating, and I could honestly listen to hundreds of combinations of languages and accents.

A similar principle might be what enamours me to Happy Together, because this really isn’t my usual cup of tea. It’s a romance melodrama told slowly and with a wafer thin plot; blegh. But, critically, this drama is about a Hong Kong couple trying to make their way around Argentina. This twofold abstraction means that I am not familiar with the environment, but neither are the main characters, so we share something. On top of that, the couple is gay, which just adds an extra layer of interesting abstraction.

With enough cultural nuances going on to keep me interested, I really didn’t mind that the plot was wafer thin, and was kept entertained by this occasionally sombre film. Director Wong’s style seems to include lots of flab that allows your mind to wander – Bresson would have a fit – but at least this doesn’t contribute towards a long running time. Indeed, the plot itself is so flimsy that the flab is needed to make it a normal running length.

Overall, I’m still not a big fan of Wong’s style, but I did find this film more entertaining than Chungking Express, which is often seen as his masterpiece. That being said, I had completely forgotten that I had seen this film until I reminded myself of its contents for this discussion, but Chungking Express has stayed with me, primarily because of its legacy. I may need to re-evaluate In the Mood for Love, however, as I remember liking some moments from that film too. Which is your favourite Wong Kar-wai film?

6/10

Discussion #230: A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

A film that truly earns its place on the list. Even if you don’t quite buy the rather far-fetched story or the Archers’ wacky take on the afterworld, this film’s visual splendour cannot be denied. With a slew of special effects ranging from an infinite descending staircase floating through space to something as simple as a pair of individuals walking through a glass door like ghosts, you’ll probably be shocked to realise a film like this could be made in the 1940s. These effects have aged spectacularly, and really help bring the story to life.

Beginning, rather unusually, in outer space. A strange way to start a tale set in the midst of World War II, it nevertheless imbues the film with a celestial, otherworldly quality right from the get-go. It suggests that this will not be your average film, and it certainly isn’t.

We have to overcome some suspension of disbelief as our main characters – David Niven and Ape-to-be Kim Hunter – ‘fall in love’ during a five minute conversation over the radio as his plane is crashing. It seems ridiculous, but then again, the story wouldn’t happen without it. Perhaps, the story even happens because of it.

We get a glimpse into the afterlife, and a cameo of a young Richard Attenborough, where we learn that Niven was supposed to die but hasn’t, triggering the story. We get a sense of the Archers’ visual flair here with the creativity involved in the set design of the afterworld, which includes realistic paintings made to look like vast, expansive vistas.

Immediately afterward, Niven happens to meet Hunter face to face and they confirm their love for each other. Niven is then visited by the elusive Conductor 71, who failed to register Niven’s death the night before, and wants him to come to the afterword immediately, which Niven refuses. This scene has stayed with me ever since as Niven uses the word “cracked” to mean “crazy” twice and, in his particular accent, “Do you think I’m cracked?” sounds like the most English thing anyone has ever said. It’s been an in-joke between my wife and myself ever since our first date, giving the scene even more sentimental value.

The next chunk of the film is spent determining if this threat is real, and how best Niven can defend himself on trial. When the trial takes place, in a gargantuan set with seemingly thousands of extras (though many of them are probably painted), Niven’s recently deceased doctor acts as his defense, while an American who was killed at the hands of the British during the American Revolutionary War, is the prosecution. 

This leads to an extremely protracted, bizarre digression about the virtues of the British versus the Americans. At one point, the prosecution makes the case that every jury would hate a British man, pointing out the jury of people from nations who have a difficult history with the British. So the doctor tries to one-up the prosecution by requesting an entirely American jury, seemingly to please the prosecution. Rather than an expected group of white Americans, however, the jury is replaced by mostly ethnic minorities, mirroring the original jury. I don’t really understand the point of this jury switch, nor indeed of the entire UK versus USA digression, but it is rather entertaining. I suppose this was to make the British feel patriotic, somehow, but it doesn’t seem to affect the plot at all.

Finally, after the new jury are selected, they get to the point, and try to determine if Niven should be allowed to live. After relatively quickly determining that Niven and Hunter do indeed love each other (I have to say, it seems crazy to me that these two are ready to die for each other so quickly after meeting), they are allowed to live happily ever after.

It’s a rather anticlimactic ending, plotwise, as it’s not really all that thought-provoking. All they needed to do was love each other to be granted a second chance? OK, seems a bit too easy. However, the means in which this is all told is so spectacular that you can forgive the story for not hanging together. The giant staircase and other sets, the use of colour versus black-and-white to differentiate between the real world and the after-life, the time-stopping effect… It all makes this absurd fantasy tale feel so grand. It’s a monumental cinematic experience, and one of the most impressive films of the decade.

9/10

Discussion #229: Written on the Wind (1956)

Director: Douglas Sirk

While All that Heaven Allows is doubtlessly Sirk’s masterpiece, Written on the Wind only goes to further prove the director’s propensity for turning mediocre, soapy schlock into something resembling high art. Dubbed ‘Women’s Weepies’, there was a movement of films during the 50s aimed at women, telling more low-brow, emotional stories resembling telenovelas, of which Sirk was at the forefront. 

One of Sirk’s many tricks is to take the source material as seriously as possible. From how earnestly the original tale is told in this film, one might believe it was originally written by Shakespeare, with the actors all seeming as if they’re trying to win an Oscar in their respective roles; Dorothy Malone would actually go on to win Best Supporting Actress as the frankly immoral sister in this film. She lusts after Rock Hudson – who wouldn’t? – and plots to take him as her husband, even if it means coercion. Though she was a character you love to hate, her absence of humanity ends up hurting the film more than helping it, as the best stories can have you empathising with even those people who do wicked things.

In the non-Oscar-winning group, we have a love triangle between ‘best friends’ Rock Hudson and Robert Stack, and the demure Lauren Bacall, who reminds me of a young Charlotte Rampling. Again, I was disappointed by Bacall’s character as well, who is evidently more interested in Hudson but decides to get together with Stack, because he’s the one who pursues her the most doggedly. Even when she jumps on a plane to get away from him, a bout of stalking and protestation from him makes her come back. I couldn’t really feel for her character when she seemed to have no backbone or do anything for herself.

The oddest thing for me was the number of comparisons I could find between this film and The Room, which makes me think Tommy Wiseau must have seen this film and used it partially as inspiration. It’s known that he was inspired by other films of the era too, such as Rebel Without a Cause for the line “You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!”, so it’s not a stretch to think he would have seen Written on the Wind. Those comparisons? Let’s see:

1. A film about two ‘best friends’ who are in love with the same woman.
2. She is getting married to the richer man, but seems to be more in love with his friend.
3. In the end, his jealousy causes him to accuse her of cheating on him, right after he hears the news that she’s about to have a child.
4. There’s a big fight between the two friends over how ‘satisfied’ the woman is.
5. Near the end where he knocks over a bunch of objects in his house before finding a gun.
6. With that gun, he kills himself.

I rest my case. Wiseau’s film is naturally a lot more dumb and has none of the nuance of Written on the Wind but, for my two cents, The Room is far more entertaining. There are of course major differences too, the main one being that Lauren Bacall doesn’t actually cheat on Robert Stack.

While the film’s elegant, sincere style does its best to make the story more enrapturing, it’s quite difficult to polish a turd. Stack’s self-destructive character isn’t entertaining or tragic enough to really care about, Rock Hudson is too righteous, and barely does anything, mainly standing around to attract the female characters in the film. Bacall is beautiful but seems to embody the 1950s perception that women have no autonomy, and Malone is a crazy, unrealistic element that makes the proceedings even more bizarre. Like eating Marks & Spencer luxury Madagascan vanilla ice cream, the texture is exquisite, but the taste is still vanilla.

5.5/10

Discussion #228: Schindler’s List (1993)

Director: Steven Spielberg

It’s rare for a movie to leave you speechless, but that’s exactly how I feel right now, watching the credits roll on one of Spielberg’s finest films, incredibly made the same year as his iconic Jurassic Park. The two are such brilliant films, but could not be more tonally different from one another. I’m not surprised that the experience of making both at the same time built resentment within him. As he said:

“When I finally started shooting…in Poland, I had to go home about two or three times a week and get on a very crude satellite feed to Northern California…to be able to approve T-Rex shots. And it built a tremendous amount of resentment and anger that I had to do this, that I had to actually go from [the emotional weight of Schindler’s List] to dinosaurs chasing jeeps, and all I could express was how angry that made me at the time. I was grateful later in June, though, but until then it was a burden.”

Just experiencing the emotional weight of Schindler’s List’s finale, I can’t imagine anything more annoying than being distracted by fake dinosaurs. Ultimately, the man must be hailed as a genius for managing to make two utterly incredible films at the same time.

As gut-wrenching as Schindler’s List can be, however, I wouldn’t say it’s a perfect film by any means. At three hours, it’s far too long; I reckon almost the entire first hour could be cut, as it’s mainly about Schindler trying to work his way up the Nazi elite, and pulling shady business deals to get his factory running. It doesn’t act as a very good introduction to the character, as I had to use the plot description on Wikipedia to figure out what was actually happening. Ultimately, since the premise of the film is pretty well-known from the outset, we’re interested in the character precisely because we know we’re going to see him turn from an industrialist into a humanitarian.

Spielberg is careful not to idolise Schindler too greatly, although it can feel a little like that towards the end of the film. He was, after all, a Nazi Party member and must therefore have agreed with the party’s rhetoric to some extent. At the beginning of the film, he seems to have no problem with the Jews not getting paid any money for their labour. It’s only when he sees the brutal liquidation of the ghettos that he starts to have some compassion for their plight. I honestly wonder why it took him so long to see that. Really, I tend to wonder why so many ordinary Germans were so easily convinced that the extermination of the Jews was essential for the prosperity of their nation, but that’s a discussion for another time.

The movie only really gets going with the liquidation of the ghettos because, before that, there isn’t the same sense of peril that comes from seeing the Jews in concentration camps getting slaughtered and dehumanised left, right and centre. The film juggles two very different tones: the story of Schindler saving Jews from the concentration camp via his titular list and scenes of somewhat unrelated brutality that demonstrate just how terrible the conditions were. These scenes don’t necessarily help tell the story, but they absolutely contribute to the gloomy atmosphere and urgency, and are educational in imagining how hard it would have been to be a Jew in Nazi Germany; I’m pretty sure my history teacher showed us some of these scenes in history class – I have clear memories of the little girl in the red coat, a neat effect indeed. Many films about World War II skirt around showing us this kind of brutality, but Spielberg’s dedication to showing, not telling, is what separates this film from the pack; this is also what makes the introduction to Saving Private Ryan so brilliant also.

If Oskar Schindler is a surprisingly nuanced character for a Spielberg film, then Amon Goeth, played by Ralph Fiennes, is anything but. A sadistic Nazi who will shoot Jews at any given moment, he’s precisely the sort of villain you love to hate. It’s frustrating to see Schindler try to appeal to his better nature, but he must have had to be careful not to raise suspicion of his activities. A scene where Goeth starts picking off random Jews in the concentration camp with his sniper, causing pandemonium, is so shocking but expertly pulled off by Spielberg.

The plot is unorthodox as it shows Schindler bureaucratically trying to save as many Jews as he can without raising suspicion. His plan goes off practically without a hitch, save for a brief scene where a trainload of Jews gets sent to Auschwitz by mistake. In that sense, Schindler hardly has to do very much or compromise himself greatly to ensure the plan’s success. When the war finishes, it just sorta happens, like “That’s it, you made it through the film.” It’s not a bad thing, really, just unusual for a Hollywood film.

After the war ends, Schindler looks around at what he’s achieved and weeps. Perhaps he never believed his plan could succeed, but as it does, he feels no sense of pride in his achievement, only sorrow that he didn’t do more. “My car, that’s ten people… My ring, it’s gold, that’s two people… at least one… I could have saved one more.” Schindler has now transmogrified into a completely selfless being, quite different from who he was at the beginning of the film; what’s strange is that it’s difficult to chart how, as the change is so subtle. The scene is powerful, making you realise the value of human life is worth so much more than trinkets and objects.

Last of all, Spielberg pulls a directorial gut punch that is guaranteed to make even the most stoic person weep, as the monochrome is transformed into colour, and we see the surviving Schindler Jews visiting Schindler’s grave and placing memorial stones on it. Accompanied by John Williams’s moving score, it would be challenging to find a dry eye in the house. At once, you can feel just how unthinkably cruel the Nazis were, but also what a valiant thing Schindler did in the face of genocide. Because of him, whole families that would have been wiped out now thrive.

World War II. It’s a topic that has been done to death by filmmakers because it’s simply so easy to draw stories or inspirations from. It’s fascinated us since its climax, and is practically its own genre of film. Spielberg, who is mainly known for making light, accessible films, proves he can be as hard-hitting as anyone else with a large budget used effectively to make spectacular scenes involving hundreds of extras to recreate the horrors of the concentration camp. It’s this spectacle, as well as Spielberg’s deft handling of the emotional weight brought on by such scenes that makes Schindler’s List an essential World War II film. On the other hand, it’s extremely long and the plot is occasionally hard to follow, not helped by the thick accents adopted by Neeson and Fiennes, but this hardly dampens an incredible cinematic experience.

8.5/10

Discussion #227: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Directors: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

It’s been announced recently that there will be a sequel series to Fawlty Towers, one of the finest sitcoms of all time. This news leaves me conflicted, as it’s always been the go-to example of how British shows are better at having shorter seasons and fewer episodes, ending on a high rather than milking the formula until the result becomes tasteless. It seems almost certain that Cleese will not be able to recapture the magic of the original series, unless there is some miracle.

This news, however, does inspire me to revisit the original classics of Cleese’s career. I was introduced to Monty Python at a tender age and essentially grew up with their comedy, buying the 45-episode DVD boxset when I found it at a store as a teenager. Holy Grail, in particular, was shown to me early on, and I remember hardly being able to breathe from laughing at the Knights of the Round Table song, which tickled me endlessly as a child; I remember specifically that a DVD extra was the same video rendered in Lego, making it even funnier somehow.

On today’s rewatch, the scene didn’t quite hold its rib-tickling power over me, but I was amazed by how well I remembered this film. Determined to be quite separate from any Hollywood-style comedy, the Pythons put the jokes first and foremost, with the story of the quest for the Holy Grail hardly making any sense whatsoever. As a result, it mirrors the troupe’s TV series, based on sketches alone.

What surprised me most was that the funniest, most iconic scenes of the film were loaded at the front. These were the scenes I could quote the most easily: “moistened bint”, “watery tart”, “your mother was an ‘amster and your father smelled of elderberries”, “fetchez la vache” and “it’s just a flesh wound” are quotes that have lived in my memory since childhood. In particular, I’ve always loved the style of comedy that includes saying the same things over and over using synonyms for hilarious effect.

Don’t get me wrong though, the level of humour is solid throughout, but there is a sense of waning energy as the film goes on. It feels almost as if the Python’s are finding their natural limit for how long they can keep the film at a high. Quite naturally, some scenes aren’t as big hitters as others, such as when Michael Palin encounters the castle full of scantily clad women, although there is a nice fourth-wall-breaking moment where the characters from upcoming scenes urge them to ‘get on with it!”

When it comes to ranking the Python films, most people either list The Holy Grail or Life of Brian as their favourite – I was always the black sheep, as I personally preferred Meaning of Life, as it was the most outrageous, although it’s been a while since I have viewed all three films. Aptly, the first two also happen to be the ones featured on the list. As a child, I always felt the ending was a letdown; we neither get to see the battle, nor Arthur finally completing the quest for the Holy Grail. It brought the film’s value down, in my eyes.

As an adult, I now see that the Pythons saw an opening for a truly unexpected, non-sequitur ending – the type that I’m sure Hitchcock would have applauded – and took it. After all, the story really never mattered in the first place, this was a film about jokes. Nevertheless, it can’t help but feel like a slight poke in the eye to anyone who was even a little invested in the farcical tale. On this rewatch, I realised the ending feels all the more sudden because the film features a brief “Intermission” roughly ten minutes from the end of the film, which might confuse the audience into thinking there was a lot more to go. Even though I now ‘get’ the shock ending, I still don’t find it particularly satisfying or funny.

Nevertheless, the sour note does little to dampen this comedic triumph, which boosted recognition for the troupe internationally and introduced the American population en masse to this more surreal type of comedy. This was Gilliam’s first film as director, which he directed alongside Terry Jones. The two had a pretty steep learning curve, apparently, and it’s evident that the two were learning what to do on the job, as some scenes aren’t very slick at all, but that only adds to the humour.

8/10

Discussion #226: 1900 (Novecento) (1976)

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Strangely, Ebert and I are in exact agreement, for once: 1900 is long as fuck and silly as shit. Bertolucci had evidently impressed his studio and distributors with his previous achievements, The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris – neither of which I’m particularly fond of – that he was given absolute creative control over his next film and a limitless budget to go along with it. What we’re left with is a five-hour doozy that’s more laughable than provocative.

Let’s start with the title. In Italian, Novecento apparently means ‘Twentieth Century’, but we are left with 1900 in English, which refers to just one year. And the film’s events start in 1901 anyway, so the title is completely meaningless.

But the action doesn’t start in 1901, it actually starts in 1945, which is roughly where the film ends, before we flash back to the start. I have to say, it’s one of the laziest tropes of cinema to start in media res: to start in the middle of your film before going back to the start. Unless there’s a valid reason for starting in media res that changes the nature of the story being told, it’s just a pointless trope that suggests the filmmaker doesn’t have enough faith in how interesting the start of their movie is, and instead wants to throw the most ‘interesting’ scene at the audience to get them interested. It’s a trope that also plagues The Blind Side, and I’m sure countless other films, although I can’t think of any others at the moment. It’s as redundant as when, whilst proving a mathematical theorem, you start by trying to assume a contradiction, prove the theorem anyway, then say that the contradiction is false. What I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t add anything to the film, except the runtime.

The film then tells the long, winding tale of two friends from opposite ends of the social spectrum, eventually played by Robert De Niro and Gérard Depardieu. What starts off as some interesting family politics eventually becomes a drawn out soap opera with the political landscape of the first and second World Wars playing out behind them. I’m quite sure that whole hours of this film could be cut without anything of substance being lost.

It all ends up in a protracted courtyard scene that sees Donald Sutherland at his silliest, barking orders whilst Depardieu and De Niro are at odds with each other in a series of scenes loaded with pretty hefty symbolism, breaking the illusion that this is still a tale of two people. The political discourse in the film is pretty suspect, as well, and I wasn’t sure I could get behind what Bertolucci was trying to say (which, of course, I have forgotten by now).

Like Greed before it, 1900 is another classic example of a director showing no restraint whatsoever, ending up with a sprawling mess. It’s far, far too long, its message getting lost in the vast tracks of footage. If you really want to make a five-hour movie, consider making a mini-series instead. There are some entertaining moments scattered throughout the proceedings, and both De Niro and Depardieu are fine actors – there’s no accounting for Sutherland, who is normally exceptional, but is bizarre as the antagonist – but those moments don’t make this gargantuan entry worth the price of admission.

3/10

Discussion #225: The Asthenic Syndrome (Астенический синдром) (1989)

Director: Kira Muratova

This is a film that I dreaded watching for a long time, as I had seen the first 15 minutes of the film early in the days of trying to complete the 1001 Movies list, but had decided to wait until the last moment to see if an HD version of the film would materialise. Those 15 minutes seemed very avant-garde, dull and riddled with subtitle issues, so I dreaded watching 2½ hours of the thing.

But I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this was not the series of random, disjointed images of Ukrainian life that I had been dreading. Forty minutes in, the tale being told in washed-out colour is revealed as nothing more than a film inside a film, a plot point for the central characters of the main story (told in full colour) to all be at the same location. Suddenly we can stop worrying about the morose misadventures of the sad woman in the first section, and move onto something completely different. I was mesmerised by this shattering of a fundamental rule of cinema, to have an entire story taken away from the audience and replaced by something different. I found it similar to the experience audiences in 1960 must have had watching Psycho, when the protagonist literally dies halfway through the film, and the film has to find a new one. It woke me up and kept me on my toes, as this new section might be another film inside a film; it wasn’t, but how was I to know?

This new section seemed much more grounded and straightforward than the rather arty first section, allowing me to get into the film further. We silently follow a man on his journey on the metro, something I can relate to as I have actually travelled on the metro in Kyiv. After that, I was fascinated by the film and where it was going, although my memories of the rest of it are hazy. It was still pretty bizarre, as I recall, but in a good way that I could still follow. It’s a little hard to relate to, as it is a view of the disintegration of Soviet life, but it’s an enthralling document nonetheless.

7/10