Criterion Corner-DVD/Blu-ray Reviews
Entries from November 2015
“SONGS OF HUMANITYâ€
By Raymond Benson
I’ll
bet many of you cinephiles out there have heard
of Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s acclaimed trilogy of films from the
1950s (Pather Panchali, aka
Song of the Little Road, 1955; Aparajito, aka The
Unvanquished, 1956; and Apur Sansar, aka The
World of Apu, 1959), but have
never actually seen them. Here is your chance to rectify that egregious error.
Quite simply put, anyone interested in film history needs to have this trio of
motion pictures under the belt.
Satyajit
Ray, who received an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1992, began his
career as an illustrator of books. One of these was Pather Panchali, a classic of Bengali literature (1928) written by
Bibhutibushan Bandyopadhyay, and its sequel, Aparajito (1932). They comprise the story of the growth of a boy
from infancy to adulthood over the course of twenty-five years or so (from the
1910s to the 1930s), and how he rises from the extreme rural poverty of his
humble beginnings to becoming a writer and husband-then-father in the big city
of Calcutta (now called Kolkata).
These
two novels eventually became the basis for the trilogy of films Ray would make
between 1952 and 1959, when he kick-started his work in cinema. A lover of movies—especially
the Italian neo-realist works such as De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (aka The
Bicycle Thief)—Ray founded a film society in Calcutta in 1947 and became an
assistant to Jean Renoir in 1949 when the French filmmaker was in India making
his seminal The River (1951). With
Renoir’s encouragement and inspiration, Ray set out to begin making his own
films. He chose Pather Panchali to be
his debut.
Because
of continual problems with funding, the picture took nearly four years to make,
and with an inexperienced crew to boot. Released to overwhelming critical praise
and numerous prizes, including the “Best Human Document†award at the Cannes Film
Festival, Song of the Little Road stands
as one of the greatest debuts of any filmmaker.
Arguably
the most striking of the three pictures, Song
presents in neo-realist style what it was really like to live in the rural jungle
of Bengal in the 1910s. Apu Roy is born the second child to very poor parents
who live in a crumbling ancestral home. Harihar, the father (Kanu Banerjee), is
something of a priest and writer, but he is always traveling, gone for months
at a time, and never brings home enough money. While he seems to be a nice man,
he is ineffectual as a husband and father. On the other hand, Apu’s mother,
Sarbajaya (brilliantly played by Karuna Banerjee, no relation to Kanu), is the
long-suffering, anxious, and stoic parent who provides for the children and
fends off criticism from neighbors. It could be said that Apu’s older sister, Durga
(played first as a younger child by Shampa “Runki†Banerjee, the real-life
daughter of Karuna Banerjee, and portrayed later as a young teen by the
wonderful Uma Das Gupta), is really the protagonist of the first film, and Ms.
Gupta is especially good in the role. And then there is “Auntie†(amazingly characterized
by 85-year-old Chunibala Devi, a veteran of Indian stage and silent films). The
woman is half-disabled, wrinkled, toothless, and cross-eyed—and despite being
addicted to opium during the shoot, her performance is quite remarkable. Apu
(Subir Banerjee, no relation to the others) is around 5 or 6 years old in this
picture and is mostly an observer of the hardships and tragedies that fall upon
his family.
The
picture is poetic, tender, and honest. Filmed by first-time cinematographer
Subrata Mitra, who went on to become Ray’s go-to DP, and scored by a young Ravi
Shankar (the sitar and bamboo flute music is fabulous!), Song of the
Little Road is a one-of-a-kind film that will move you in
unexpected ways.
When
the picture became a hit, Ray was encouraged to continue the story from the
novels and made The Unvanquished, in
which a slightly older Apu and his parents move out of the jungle to the holy
city of Benares (also known as Varanasi) on the Ganges. There, Harihar works as
a priest and Sarbajaya is still the strong one in the family—until tragedy
strikes again. Apu and his mother move back to the country, and there Apu
decides he wants to go to school and not be a priest like his father. It takes
money to attend school, so his mother does what she can to make it happen. An
older, teenage Apu then goes to Calcutta to attend college. Karuna Banerjee is
the focal point of this middle entry in the trilogy, and her performance is powerful
and heartbreaking. Apu is played by two different actors throughout the course
of the picture.
Finally, The World of Apu was made
after Ray took a break from the trilogy and made a couple of other films
in-between (e.g., the acclaimed The Music
Room, 1958). In the third
chapter, Apu (played by longtime Indian star Soumitra Chatterjee) is now in his
twenties and living alone in Calcutta. He is a loner, a dreamer, and an artist.
He is writing a novel in which he has little faith, he isn’t interested in
working, and he has no money. And yet he is somewhat happy with his “freedom.â€
Then, by happenstance, he is talked into an arranged marriage to a young girl,
Aparna (played by the beautiful Sharmila Tagore in her first film role—she went
on to become a star in Indian cinema), and Apu’s life is changed once again. The World of Apu is primarily a love
story, but it’s also about the assuming of responsibility for one’s actions.
It’s
too bad that there was never a fourth chapter in the story. It would have been
interesting to see what happened to Apu when he was in his forties or fifties.
Like Truffaut’s Adventures of Antoine
Doinel, which covers the life of a young man over the course of five films, The Apu Trilogy is a monumental epic—but an extremely personal and intimate one—that covers universal truths, emotions, and values recognizable
in any culture and language. It stands as one of the most heartfelt statements
on humanity ever put on celluloid.
The
Criterion Collection’s new boxed-set contains all three films, gorgeously and
meticulously restored in 4K digital, undertaken in collaboration with the
Academy Film Archive at the AMPAS and L’Immagine Ritrovata from existing prints
(the negatives were long ago destroyed in a fire). There are many supplements
on each of the three discs that include new interviews with Soumitra Chatterjee,
Sharmila Tagore, and Shampa Banerjee (now Shampa Srivastava), as well as with film
historian Gideon Bachmann, camera assistant Soumendu Roy, film writer Ujjal
Chakraborty, Ray biographer Andrew Robinson, and film historian Mamoun Hassan.
Vintage interviews include several with Ray, Ravi Shankar, members of the crew
and cast, and more. A handful of vintage documentaries are included, along with
footage from the 1992 Oscar ceremony, in which Ray received his honorary award
in a bed in a Calcutta hospital. The booklet features a selection of Ray’s
storyboards for Song of the Little Road,
as well as essays by critics Terrence Rafferty and Girish Shambu.
The Apu Trilogy on Blu-ray is a
landmark release from the Criterion Collection of milestones not only of
Bengali cinema, but of motion picture history. Check it out—you will find it a
profoundly rewarding experience.
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By Hank Reineke
In a relatively infamous review, a film critic from the
Atlanta Journal dismissively sniffed
that Dont Look Back (that’s not a typo, there is, mysteriously, no apostrophe
in the title) was little more than “the neighborhood’s biggest brat blowing his
nose for ninety minutes.†This harsh
sentiment was echoed by a critic from the Cleveland
Plains Dealer who added the film was “certainly not for moviegoers who
bathe and/or shave.†Time, of course,
has proven such histrionic appraisals of this very significant film to be entirely
wide of the mark. Most film scholars now
regard Donn Allen (D.A.) Pennebaker’s gritty and grainy opus as the first true masterwork
of rock music documentary filmmaking.
Though some of the earliest reviews were clearly nonplussed
with Pennebaker’s maverick “direct cinema†style of filmmaking, most of the critical
scorn was reserved for the movie’s principal figure, Bob Dylan. Even such early believers as Israel G. “Izzyâ€
Young, a folk-music enthusiast who took a chance in November of 1961 and chose
to produce Dylan’s first New York City concert, thought Dont Look Back, “A sad
event. Dylan surrounded by machinations,
appearing wherever he is told to, and resenting it. He is abusive to interviewers. Why? He didn’t have to agree to it.â€
In defense of his detractors, both friendly and
antagonistic, it is true that few of Dylan’s Dont Look Back challengers are
spared the artist’s stony silence or mocking ridicule. In the course of the film the strikingly
young but already revered folksinger appears, at any given time, to be aloof,
condescending, or downright rude to those who might dare touch the hem. The devoted pilgrims, uncomprehending
journalists, and dullards who crowd and distract the musician in dressing rooms,
hotel suites, press conferences or out on the street are ceremoniously – and
sometimes painfully – put-on or put-off by this enfant terrible. Pennebaker’s
shoulder-held 16mm newsreel camera is seemingly always at the ready to capture every
glorious – and cringe-worthy - moment for posterity, all in a dispassionate and
non-judgmental manner. Since his two-camera
team rolled nearly continuously, Dylan himself opines on a supplement from this
magnificent new Blu-ray issue from Criterion, “After awhile you didn’t notice [the
cameras] anymore.â€
What Dylan’s harshest critics totally miss is that the
singer’s perceived boorishness is reflexively defensive; it’s his dilettantish
but not too un-understandable coping mechanism to navigate the maelstrom encircling
him. Throughout Dont Look Back, the camera
establishes - in stark black and white imagery- that by 1965 Dylan was already caught
uncomfortably in the cross-hairs of the emerging culture-war. Dylan’s gift at word-play and his brilliant,
thoughtful songs brought him deserved attention; but they also managed, perhaps
accidentally, to tap into the zeitgeist of the brimming ‘60’s revolution. The singer’s mysterious persona, his wounded
singing-style, his elemental guitar-playing, and his haunting word-images were not
simply embraced. They were soon imbedded into the psyches of those most
deeply moved: academics, politicos, folk-music aficionados, devoted followers
and gossipy news gatherers. Viewing this
phenomenon through the prism of today’s prevalent cynicism is difficult; it’s not
easily explainable why Dylan’s most ardent admirers expected that this skinny, twenty-four
year old youngster – one with less than optimal social skills no less– had the
ability to impart wisdom befitting that of an ancient, wizened sage. Throughout the film the singer is pressed to share
the secrets of the universe that everyone presumes he’s holding close to his
chest. Though Dylan makes several
sincere attempts to explain, “I’m just a guitar player. That’s all…,†his protestations go unheeded.
There is one archival flashback near the film’s
beginning that provides a window of context for such deification. Upon a BBC journalist’s query “How did it all
begin for you, Bob?,†Pennebaker flashes to a civil rights rally where – in a
strikingly invasive full screen and spit-flicking close-up – Dylan brays out
the verses to one of his best “finger-pointing†songs, “Only a Pawn in their
Game.†The song, which would see issue
a half-year later on his seminal The
Times They Are A-Changin’ album, brashly charges not only the genuine
assassin of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, but a morally corrupt police
force, government officials, and court justices as malleable co-conspirators to
the murder. To the best of my knowledge,
this is the only footage in Dont Look Back that is not the product of
Pennebaker’s own set of voyeuristic cameras.
The rally footage came courtesy of Edmund Emshwiller, a
celebrated visual artist and illustrator who would dabble in experimental
filmmaking in the early 1960s. Carrying
along a single 16mm wind-up Bolex camera, Emshwiller followed a troupe of
Greenwich Village folk-singing activists (Dylan, Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel,
and the Freedom Singers) in July of 1963 to a Voter Registration Rally on the
farm of Silas Magee in Greenwood, Mississippi. Emshwiller’s resulting short film, Streets of Greenwood, a reference to
the small town that was, at the time, a hotbed of racial discrimination and
KKK-vigilante violence, would, sadly, not see wide release. Pete Seeger would later suggest it was likely
Dylan’s inclusion in the finished experimental-film that doomed Streets of
Greenwood to near-oblivion. He was
right.
An extremely limited release of this obscure agit-prop short
film had, reportedly, been blocked by Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman. Grossman was a major figure in the early
1960s folk-music revival, a tough and calculating business manager by
reputation; his table stable of clients would eventually include Peter, Paul,
and Mary, Janis Joplin, Odetta, Ian and Sylvia, Phil Ochs, and Richie Havens
amongst others. In 1962, Dylan signed a
ten-year exclusive contract with Grossman, an opportunistic move that in three
years time would swiftly transform the scruffy singer from little-known folksinger
to pop-music icon. It was also a
temporary alliance of strong personalities predestined to end acrimoniously.
Continue reading "REVIEW: D.A. PENNEBAKER'S "BOB DYLAN: DONT LOOK BACK" (1966); CRITERION BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION"
“WHAT DREAMS ARE
MADE OFâ€
By Raymond Benson
Of
all the talented filmmakers who have made a mark in the history of cinema,
there is that handful who belong in a
special category. Granted, many directors are auteurs, in that they have a recognizable style and thematic
consistency to their work—a “signature†that identifies them as the “authorsâ€
of their pictures. But there is a rare sub-set of auteurs who are so strikingly original and iconoclastic that their
work is singularly their own and unlike that of any other filmmaker. David
Lynch is one of these. No one makes the kind of movies he does.
Mulholland Drive is easily one of
Lynch’s best pictures (and he’s not very prolific, either—only ten feature
films to date, not counting television productions). It was released in 2001 to
massive critical acclaim (Lynch shared Best Director at Cannes with Joel Coen,
and he was nominated for a Best Director Oscar), as well as a great deal of
bafflement and mutterings from exiting audiences such as, “Well, that was weird.â€
Yes,
it’s a strange film—after all, it’s a David Lynch picture, and he is, perhaps,
the foremost proponent of surrealism in cinema since the advent of Luis Buñuel.
But Lynch is also a romanticist, and his blending of these two somewhat
conflicting artistic movements result in a distinctly different kind of animal,
something that has been coined “Lynchian.†There is a beauty to Mulholland Drive that is mesmerizing.
The mystery and ambiguity of its narrative is almost secondary to the emotional
punch the director delivers to the audience.
Much
has been written about the movie in an attempt to analyze it and make sense of
the non-linear plot, and it is, like all great art, open to interpretation. It
takes more than one viewing to “get†it, although I don’t think anyone can fully get it. If this is your first
encounter with Mulholland Drive—and
the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray edition is an excellent medium with which to approach the film—it is highly
suggested you watch the film in its entirety, and then view it again the
following day after thinking about it.
Basically,
the film is the sad, tragic story of a severely depressed and failed Hollywood
actress named Diane (played by Naomi Watts, in a brilliant, breakout
performance that shot her to “A†list status) who has been jilted by her
lesbian lover, Camilla (Laura Elena Harring) for a film director (Justin Theroux).
Diane hires a hit man to murder Camilla, and then kills herself out of remorse
and guilt. Doesn’t sound too savory, does it? Never mind—Lynch tells this story
in the form of a compelling quasi-neo-noir mystery, and in the process he creates
a puzzle for the audience to solve in order to connect the dots. Out of the
146-minutes of running time, nearly the first two hours of it consist of a
dream Diane is having which casts her as a wholesome, talented, optimistic and
aspiring actress named Betty. She meets an amnesiac victim who adopts the name
Rita (also Harring), and they set about attempting to find out how Rita came to
be in her situation. At around the 1:57:00 mark in the picture, Diane wakes
from her dream to her reality. What follows then are several non-linear flashbacks
to events that happened prior to Diane having her dream.
Dream
logic is usually nonsensical when analyzed upon waking, but during the actual
dream, everything makes sense, right? When watching the first two hours, you’ll
see several characters and objects that appear in relation to the “plot†of the
dream... but later, in the wakeful reality, the actors who played the earlier characters
and the same objects appear in different contexts—with a little thought you can
decipher how the dream connects these elements with the real circumstances. The
clues are all there on screen.
Another
interesting aspect of Mulholland Drive is
that it was originally a pilot for a possible television series a la Twin Peaks. Lynch had filmed the “dreamâ€
section of the picture, but the network rejected it. The director got financing
elsewhere, re-tooled the existing footage, wrote the rest of the story, and
brought the principles back for more shooting. This is why the detectives,
played by Robert Forster and Brent Briscoe, simply disappear from the movie
after the first half hour—they were originally intended to be regular
characters in the TV series. One can’t help but wonder what if.
This
fascinating film comes with a gorgeous new, restored 4K digital transfer,
supervised by Lynch and director of photography Peter Deming, with a 5.1
surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray. Like most DVDs and
Blu-rays that Lynch approves, there are no chapter stops. Supplements include
some terrific new interviews with Lynch and Naomi Watts together (very funny
and revealing); Theroux, Harring, and Deming; composer Angelo Badalamenti (wait
until you hear how he got started writing film scores!); production designer
Jack Fisk; and casting director Johanna Ray. There’s a deleted scene, the
trailer, and a wonderful treat—on-set footage of Lynch directing several scenes
from the film. The booklet contains a 2005 interview with Lynch from Chris
Rodley’s book, Lynch on Lynch.
Mulholland Drive is a masterpiece in
David Lynch’s canon and the new Criterion release certainly does it justice. This
is a film that is haunting, beautiful, and full of secrets and surprises. It
really is the stuff that dreams are made of.
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