My relationship with the films of Ingmar Bergman has been analogous to that with a popular elder at a new church: I respect the title and all, but I usually find myself squinting when people tell me he's more than just deathly serious.
The situation is timeless, but the setting is very much of the moment.
Or, perhaps it is just my personal history (or lack of it) that leaves me probing the surfaces of Buñuel's works like blocks of marble, trying to feel my way around to the human portrait that lies beneath. Am I not Roman Catholic enough to "get it"? Not Latin enough? Surely it's not a case of my being not cynical enough? I mean, I find the contemptous light to which everyone in Buñuel's universe gets held up to misanthropic and tedious, and that's coming from a man who loves Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
Sean Bean and McGregor get tied together through the barbs. We are all interconnected. It’s allegorical. It’s metaphorical. It’s allephorical.
Victor Hugo's novel is a timeless classic which has been retold and well loved since its inception, in part because it tells the story of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. The contemporary stage adaptation focuses on the antagonistic relationship between Valjean and Javert, but Bernard's film really focuses more on Valjean's spiritual development, echoing the novel's emphasis on his experience of grace and the way that it changes him gradually. Valjean is one of the great characters in the history of literature, and Harry Baur is totally up to the task of bringing him to life. The film feels less like an adaptation than a translation, and every time I assumed there would be a concession to staging or special effects--the barricades, the sewers--Bernard is able to take us there without drawing attention to the effects for effects sake.
The Criterion DVD had an interview with Neil Labute talking about how Rohmer influenced him, but I confess that towards the end of Love in the Afternoon, the film I kept thinking about was Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.
A well deserved Academy Award (for best documentary) went to Gibney's investigation into the policies and practices that created the Abu Ghraib scandal. Eschewing sensationalistic tactics and avoiding an over-reliance on the photos themselves (which appear but aren't the final word), Taxi builds persuasive force until the viewers amazement reaches a level of disbelief.
Question: What do the following actors have in common?: Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal, Keanu Reeves, Nathan Lane, Robin Williams, Alicia Silverstone. Answer: They were all exposed trying to do Shakespeare.
Lars and the Real Girl is a sweet film that gets a lot of emotional mileage out of showing people being kind. It is a film in which people are loving for no other reason than they can be and where they choose to be compassionate rather than cruel because doing the former seldom costs more than the latter.
Everyone wants to to be able to lay claim to being the first to recognize potential greatness, even if that means valuing present performance only in connection to future growth potential.
