Where we discuss the current cinema
Madame Cura and I went to two movies this weekend which at the end of each, audience members actually applauded (albeit weakly). Can't remember the last time I experienced that at a suburban movie theater.
No Country for Old Men is an intense experience from the moment it begins. Are there still places as remote as the Coen brothers' locations? And the sound...I'm not sure if there was even a soundtrack, just environmental sounds that, by their isolation and intensity, build tension in ways that a soundtrack never could. Every role was also played to the hilt; each character believable and well drawn. The skewed humor is the Coens at their best.
I'll let Roy give you the intellectual review...I too was disappointed in the end (spoiler alert). That said, definitely worth seeing, particularly if you've been a fan of the Coens since Blood Simple.
I'm Not There is an entirely different affair. What seems, on paper, to be a fairly hackneyed idea -- using six different actors to play Dylan at different phases of his career and using different names, not of which are "Dylan" -- turns out to be absolutely essential. Todd Haynes realized that each aspect of Dylan's career wasn't just evolution, change, growth...that Dylan became a different actor himself. Particularly good were Cate Blanchett as Jude and Heath Ledger as Robbie. Blanchett was almost too perfect in capturing the Don't Look Back Dylan of amphetamines and heroin. And Ledger's Robbie (and, even more so, the painfully beautiful Charlotte Gainsbourg) evokes the heartbreak and anger that underlay so much of Blood on the Tracks and Desire. Julianne Moore, in a smaller part (if you can believe that), captures middle aged Joan Baez (Alice Fabian) as well.
I did have some quibbles (maybe more than quibbles)...like Joan Baez treated like some bit actor who happened to come across Dylan.
I would have wondered if Haynes failed to unmask the myth-making that has always been Dylan's career or if the myth-making was the point, had I not noticed that Grey Water Park Productions was involved. In none of the mostly ecstatic reviews did I see it mentioned that Dylan's company produced the movie. So, myth-making was the point. Also, while the Rimbaud character was interesting, what the Rimbaud character arose from isn't explored at all. In other words, did Dylan just use the Village "scene" as a jumping board to something else, or did he absorb that world even as he took advantage of the kindness (and books and records and politics) of strangers? The movie washes over that with excerpts from "a documentary" that makes New York just a freak show and Dylan a passerby with No Direction Home. Like the 60 Minutes interview of a few years back, in which Dylan expressed amazement that songs like "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" just sprang into his head like some Venus on the half shell, the movie expands this notion that Dylan wasn't synthesizing everything he was hearing and reading, soaking it up like a sponge. His genius was (is) in squeezing that sponge, not in free associating imagery existing in his head pre-formed, as though in religious ecstasy, as soon as he decided to stop singing Woody Guthrie songs. With this movie Dylan continues work on his efforts to control the perception of his career.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Being "Dylan" is part of his art.
It would have been interesting to show these characters producing albums. Dylan's success comes from the albums, not from single performances, and producing those albums are all hard work and serendipity.
Also, some historical perspective, please. In 1966, during Dylan's tour of England, the Beatles were no longer the Fab Four, acting cute in their tight suits, and -- I'm sorry -- no English audience ever rushed the stage when Dylan went electric. Hell, the descriptions of the "angry reactions" of crowds in the U.S. were, when you listen to the tapes now, obviously overblown.
And while I liked Richard Gere's character, I think they could have had a lot more fun with the songs of The Basement Tapes.
But the movie's a rush and it's easy to start trying to figure where certain dialog came from -- a Dylan interview, interviews with other players back in the day -- so much of it sounds familiar to me. And the use of different film stocks, different camera types, and the various changes in pacing are ecstatic.
Now that baseball season is relinquished to the Hot Stove, guess I'll be going to more of these newfangled "picture shows."
No Country for Old Men is an intense experience from the moment it begins. Are there still places as remote as the Coen brothers' locations? And the sound...I'm not sure if there was even a soundtrack, just environmental sounds that, by their isolation and intensity, build tension in ways that a soundtrack never could. Every role was also played to the hilt; each character believable and well drawn. The skewed humor is the Coens at their best.
I'll let Roy give you the intellectual review...I too was disappointed in the end (spoiler alert). That said, definitely worth seeing, particularly if you've been a fan of the Coens since Blood Simple.
I'm Not There is an entirely different affair. What seems, on paper, to be a fairly hackneyed idea -- using six different actors to play Dylan at different phases of his career and using different names, not of which are "Dylan" -- turns out to be absolutely essential. Todd Haynes realized that each aspect of Dylan's career wasn't just evolution, change, growth...that Dylan became a different actor himself. Particularly good were Cate Blanchett as Jude and Heath Ledger as Robbie. Blanchett was almost too perfect in capturing the Don't Look Back Dylan of amphetamines and heroin. And Ledger's Robbie (and, even more so, the painfully beautiful Charlotte Gainsbourg) evokes the heartbreak and anger that underlay so much of Blood on the Tracks and Desire. Julianne Moore, in a smaller part (if you can believe that), captures middle aged Joan Baez (Alice Fabian) as well.
I did have some quibbles (maybe more than quibbles)...like Joan Baez treated like some bit actor who happened to come across Dylan.
I would have wondered if Haynes failed to unmask the myth-making that has always been Dylan's career or if the myth-making was the point, had I not noticed that Grey Water Park Productions was involved. In none of the mostly ecstatic reviews did I see it mentioned that Dylan's company produced the movie. So, myth-making was the point. Also, while the Rimbaud character was interesting, what the Rimbaud character arose from isn't explored at all. In other words, did Dylan just use the Village "scene" as a jumping board to something else, or did he absorb that world even as he took advantage of the kindness (and books and records and politics) of strangers? The movie washes over that with excerpts from "a documentary" that makes New York just a freak show and Dylan a passerby with No Direction Home. Like the 60 Minutes interview of a few years back, in which Dylan expressed amazement that songs like "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" just sprang into his head like some Venus on the half shell, the movie expands this notion that Dylan wasn't synthesizing everything he was hearing and reading, soaking it up like a sponge. His genius was (is) in squeezing that sponge, not in free associating imagery existing in his head pre-formed, as though in religious ecstasy, as soon as he decided to stop singing Woody Guthrie songs. With this movie Dylan continues work on his efforts to control the perception of his career.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Being "Dylan" is part of his art.
It would have been interesting to show these characters producing albums. Dylan's success comes from the albums, not from single performances, and producing those albums are all hard work and serendipity.
Also, some historical perspective, please. In 1966, during Dylan's tour of England, the Beatles were no longer the Fab Four, acting cute in their tight suits, and -- I'm sorry -- no English audience ever rushed the stage when Dylan went electric. Hell, the descriptions of the "angry reactions" of crowds in the U.S. were, when you listen to the tapes now, obviously overblown.
And while I liked Richard Gere's character, I think they could have had a lot more fun with the songs of The Basement Tapes.
But the movie's a rush and it's easy to start trying to figure where certain dialog came from -- a Dylan interview, interviews with other players back in the day -- so much of it sounds familiar to me. And the use of different film stocks, different camera types, and the various changes in pacing are ecstatic.
Now that baseball season is relinquished to the Hot Stove, guess I'll be going to more of these newfangled "picture shows."
Labels: don't look back, dylan, movies
posted by John at 5:43 PM
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