Amoeba Music

Before Larry Clark was a known figure in controversial filmmaking he was a brilliant photographer. Some might argue that his photography is considerably better than his films, and I'd have to agree. By "better" I mean that they have a deeper effect on you and, despite the often bleak subject matter, they are clean, provoking images with good form. However, Clark's first film Kids, co-written by Harmony Korine, should be considered his directorial masterpiece.

In the early '90s Clark shot a series of photos that were documents of New York skate culture and depravity within the lifestyles of young people. Clark enjoyed interacting with his subjects, often finding a muse and/or love interest among them. Many of those New York kids would later be in his first film, more or less dramatizing and extending what could be felt through the grizzly portraits of them. The energy of the film is fresh and the entire line-up, omitting the producer, was quite amateur; Korine was 19 when he wrote the script; Leo Fitzpatrick, Justin Pierce, Chloe Sevigny, and Rosario Dawson were all debuting on the screen. Clark's ability to compose a frame filled with images you can't ignore ultimately stabilized the film, and Korine's efforts, matched with an ambitious cast, made it something to be realized and respected.

When choosing where to start in a director's filmography, I've always enjoyed picking at random. Recommendations tend to be fairly overwhelming and a total buzz kill. The themes of Fassbinder's films were always intriguing to me, and since I enjoy seeing filmmakers break down and interpret romantic relationships, I started with The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. The film surpassed my expectations in terms of human dynamics by exposing a character's relationship to the women in her life in such a constricting setting, from her lover down to her servant.

Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen) is as far removed from an overnight success as a person could get. As a fashion designer in Germany, she had to go through the process of constant rejection and a humiliating divorce before being taken seriously in her field. These experiences have turned her into a cynic in matters of work and love. Her daughter is away at boarding school and she lives alone with her servant/secretary/assistant, Marlene (Irm Hermann). Marlene's role as a servant in her home goes far beyond the orthodox. In a sense, she's a broken extension of Petra, living vicariously through her disgrace and vanity. You get the feeling that she once aspired to be a self-sustaining fashion designer, but found herself tailoring not only Petra's designs, but her mess of an existence.

The Model Couple is not science-fiction, though it does induce the same paranoia and anxiety about the future that some of those films do. And while it is a story about people whose lives are on display for the world, it in no way resembles movies like The Truman Show.

The film exaggerates the borders where privacy and personal freedoms are obscured, if not removed, by a totalitarian government. Set in 1970s France, The Ministry of the Future, an organization claiming to try and make "a new city for a new man," is executing an outrageous experiment. They've chosen a seemingly “normal” Caucasian married couple to be the poster-children for their efforts. Claudine (Anémone) and Jean-Michel (André Dussollier) have been married for a couple of years. Claudine takes care of the home and Jean-Michel is the breadwinner. The two are thrilled to be chosen to represent all of France. They are brought to a compound where they will arrange a new life with the help of the Ministry, in a place dubbed "The Model Home."

A blind masseuse turns to sculpture when the thrill of touch becomes so tormenting that he needs an outlet for his desires. For every woman who he's ever worked on, there is an oversized replica of her limbs protruding from the walls of his studio. Of all the female clients that he and co-workers have massaged, Aki (Mako Midori) has always been an exceptional study in beauty. As the current muse of an avant guard artist, she exists only to be admired. Her figure becomes a target for Michio (Eiji Funakoshi), the blind sculptor, and with the help of his mother (Noriko Sengoku) he kidnaps the model with the hope of being able to immortalize her body in clay.

Michio and his mother live in a secluded warehouse far from Tokyo, and Aki is locked into his studio and given an ultimatum. She can either willingly model for his sculpture in captivity and be released upon its completion, or she can succumb to being put unconscious for the work until he's finished. He explains that for a blind person life is agony. The joys of the remaining senses are absent; they function only as a means of nourishment and necessity. Of these remaining senses, touch has become something that Michio needs to flourish. He further explains that he wishes to pioneer the art of touch, claiming that the other senses, such as sound, have an art form to match. Unwilling to accept things such as music to add substance to his life, he's hellbent on making the physical discovery of the human body a branch of art.

Bad Timing does more than paint a picture of obsession between two incompatible lovers. It explores the inevitable consequences that occur when two people don't know how to walk away from their doomed relationship.

Alex Linden (Art Garfunkel) is an American psychoanalyst and professor with a position in Vienna. He profiles powerful people for a living and interacts with commoners in a very pretentious and cold way. Milena (Theresa Russell) is the American wife of a Czech diplomat who approaches Alex at a party. Their story is told in two parts, beginning with Milena's attempt to commit suicide. After taking a large amount of pills she calls Alex to say goodbye. He goes to her apartment, calls an ambulance, and is questioned for several hours at the hospital by Inspector Netusil (Harvey Keitel) and his team. Alex can't seem to figure out why he's being interrogated about the lifestyle of a woman he claims to be merely friends with. It is announced that Milena has overdosed and is in a coma, and something about his story and her critical condition just doesn't add up. From the time he claims she called him in distress to the time it took for him to arrive at her home and call for help, there's a questionable series of hours that are unaccounted for. Through a series of flashbacks, the film goes through their toxic love affair, ending with the detective's efforts to try and figure out if her attempted suicide could have been prevented, or if it was an attempt at all.

Sleeker and more satisfying than any fictional era-reproduction in cinema, Primitive London, the follow up to London in the Raw, gives viewers the pleasure of revisiting London's diverse '60s pop culture. Touching on the divide of its affluent and poverty-stricken society following the depression, the film begins by zooming in on London's adolescents.

Starting with mod culture, the film describes those involved in it as having an identity with no class boundaries. Regardless of where you came from, the flashy and colorful clothing of this scene could transform you into a character worthy of fickle respect. There's also an explanation for the effeminate male clothing, which apparently derived from the abundance of womens textiles when many would-be male patrons were killed in two world wars. Outfits that would have been seen as amoral for a man became acceptable.

The essay by Michael Joshua Rowin included with this film seems to approach the film's historical aspects, presenting its theme as an overflowing aggression from the director in the turbulent '60s. Rowin addresses the fact that Ferreri - unlike his peers Antonioni, Pasolini, Bertolucci, and Fellini - made films that went against the norm and were arguably ahead of their time. For Ferreri, the '60s meant the drastic change in the importance of politics and culture, which was replaced by materialism, technological stimulus, and constant protest. He claims that Dillinger is Dead is Ferreri's “angriest” work, and that its masculinity shines through its use of a war-friendly atmosphere, "weak" female characters, and phallic symbols. There is no argument that Ferreri was tackling the changes in his world in a way that requires some delving into and critique. My review of Dillinger is Dead is not to go against those made by Rowin and other critics, but to give a different understanding of the lead character. From someone who is familiar with the films of Ferreri's peers, and other Foreign New-Wave directors, there was something fantastic about this film that has nothing to do with political and social change—a quality that is a bit more universal and relevant.

The protagonist of the film doesn't have a name outside of the script, in which he's named Glauco. He manufactures gas masks and is dissatisfied with his work. A colleague gives a long metaphorical monologue on the need to protect people from a deadly society and the alienation that has derived from such protection. Glauco returns home to find a cold and mediocre meal left for him and a beautiful wife who would rather nod off on pills than join him at dinner. Glauco returns to the meal and refuses to eat it. He has a vision of steak and starts to make his own gourmet dinner from a cookbook. While searching for ingredients in the kitchen, he stumbles upon a pile of old magazines in a cupboard. He notices an object wrapped in a dated newspaper. Inside is an old and rusted gun, and the paper is the front page that announced the violent death of Public Enemy # 1, John Dillinger. The gun fascinates him, and it appears to belong to the notorious criminal. He starts to take it apart as he cooks, oiling every part of it and adoring its complexity. His maid, Sabina, enters the story as a lazy, but pretty young woman who doesn’t seem to do any housework. He watches television, soaking in a world that he's removed from—a world with changing technology and young girls who are interviewed on make-up and miniskirts.

What is the message behind films that intertwine unrelated characters? Where does the relevancy of “six degrees of separation” show itself in such a story? There is a vast difference between the various methods in which this plot is used. Some directors, like Quentin Tarantino, used it for suspense. In Pulp Fiction, characters met at random intervals and changed the course of the action, or in some cases sequences were jumbled so that suspense and interest could be built. Many foreign films, including Amélie, Dog Days, and Almodóvar's Bad Education present this technique as something cathartic and full of important lessons in love and life. There seems to be a touch of destiny leading characters to their fate, and thus these are a statement on humanity and inevitability. The effect can be either beautiful or hopeless, but they all have one thing in common: they rely on the presence of a person or series of people to start the chain of events.

Carnage is different in that respect. While it does open with a bullfighter in Spain, it is not his presence that begins the action. Facing him in the ring is a bull with a secret. It appears normal, but was born half-blind. This rare trait gives the beast an advantage. His adversary in the ring cannot notice that it's different until they've begun. All probability and familiarity with its movement is absent. The skill and experience of the fighter is no match for a bull that doesn't fit a general pedigree, and the man is struck by the beast. But the fighter was brave and very skilled; the bull suffered several blows and ultimately bled to death. Its body is butchered and, according to custom, certain parts are given to the fighter. Others are more valuable and sold around the world. The bull's limbs and bones are shipped to Belgium, France, and Spain until they find suitable markets. The people who take a part of the bull end up finding pain, redemption, death, and in some cases, each other.

Apparently there is something timeless about the Oedipus complex, as well as the fear of a catastrophic death. We play with the idea of the world coming to an end and cities crumbling to ruin in almost every action or sci-fi film. The thrill is exhausted, and the same is true of the over-saturated use of Freud. However, with Guy Maddin's Careful I venture to say that one may view a radiant and technically stunning movie about fear itself. The borders we create with other human beings, both relatives and strangers, are shifted in a way that is cult-like, similar to the backwards villages that were the foundation of our society. To add to the old feeling of a place filled with religious fanatics is a looming fear that is as outrageous as it is interesting.

In the town of Tolzbad, we find a group of people who must must never be careless or loud in their activities. In the past, the sound of an animal or a sneeze could potentially cause an avalanche from the mountains nearby. The fear of this tragic death has lead to several procedures and guidelines that should prevent it from ever happening again. Animals have had their vocal cords cut; children are gagged while playing until they are old enough to understand the consequences of their squeals; windows are covered with sheepskin, and all instruments are muffled. On top of the sound restraints are general warnings; never hold a baby by a pin, don't climb the mountains without proper gear, etc. The unison of superstition and nervousness provided more of an insight to a time long gone than the use of technicolor (or hand tinting?) throughout the film, or the silent-era design.

For those of you who do not know of Mike and George Kuchar, I highly recommend the documentary It Came From Kuchar which gives a thrilling account of their lives as underground filmmakers and artists. For those of you who know about them and are unable to find their work, I suggest looking at the releasing company Other Cinema, and the DVD compilations, Experiments in Terror. The documentary highlights their works, but three films stand out: The Devil's Cleavage, Born of the Wind, and Sins of the Fleshapoids. I was beyond thrilled to discover that some of their films were available for purchase, even if it's a just a few. The Other Cinema release of Fleshapoids also includes The Craven Sluck, and The Secret of Wendel Samson. Shot with consumer grade film with a cast of the director's friends, Fleshapoids is an experience in underground cinema that is not to be missed.

The Kuchars were at the tender age of 23 when they made this film, with Mike behind the camera and George in a starring role. The music assemblage and narration is done by Bob Cowan, and George Kuchar co-wrote the script. It takes place a million years in the future, where humans have enslaved androids with shells of human flesh, using them to do menial tasks and obey their every command. The earth suffered a nuclear war, turning rivers to poison and causing the near-death of all living things. The quest for scientific and mechanical knowledge brought about great turmoil, and now humans only indulge in the fulfillment of the senses. Picture hippies who wear mardi gras beads and fake furs. Their lairs are filled with leopard print, jewels, and bountiful displays of food. They call on the fleshapoids for massages and the ability to have everything done for them.