The Night of the Hunter

Directed by Charles Laughton
United States, 1955

The Night of the Hunter was not successful in its initial release. Critics were mostly baffled by it, and audiences stayed away. It was the directorial debut of Charles Laughton, the famed British-American actor, as well as his last film. Its poor reception guaranteed that Laughton would not be given money to make another. He passed away in 1962. Since its release, The Night of the Hunter's reputation has slowly grown, and now it is considered among the all-time classics of American cinema. It belongs in fine company with many challenging films that were initially misunderstood or derided, to be later re-evaluated as masterpieces - Vertigo, Barry Lyndon, and The New World among them.

Like those films, The Night of the Hunter was out of step with tastes of the time. There was nothing else in 1955 comparable to it - and nothing since, either. It's impossible to pigeonhole in a certain genre or style. It's been called a horror, a film noir, a fairy tale, and it fits all those definitions. It is equally moulded by American folklore and the Old Testament, Nosferatu and Bambi. Perhaps Charles Laughton himself described it best, as a "nightmarish Mother Goose story".

It opens on a startlingly weird image - the floating head of wise old Lillian Gish, former starlet of silent cinema, imposed onto a starry sky. She is lecturing a group of eager children (also disembodied heads dangling in the cosmos), quoting the verse from Matthew about the danger of false prophets, who come dressed in sheep's clothing but inwardly are wolves. We then meet one of these wolves - Reverend Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), a wandering preacher with a drawling baritone voice and the unctuous manners of a salesman. He's also a Bluebeard, a serial killer who preys upon lonely widows and steals their money. His latest target is Willa Harper, whose deceased husband, in a fit of Depression-era desperation, robbed a bank and murdered two people in the process. Powell, spending time behind bars for his latest act of petty theft, meets John Harper in jail before his execution. Harper unwittingly lets slip that the stolen money remains hidden back home. The only people who know where it lies are his young children, little John and Pearl. Reverend Powell has a new family to target.

As Reverend Powell, Robert Mitchum gives one of the all-time great villainous performances. He is a hateful character, frightening and darkly comic. Mitchum based the performance on people he met in the South - con artists who knew they would be believed as long as they spoke with conviction and brandished a Bible. Powell wields Biblical language like a weapon, and prays with an open jackknife clasped between his hands. He's enough of a charismatic personality that we understand why so many fall for his act. On his fingers he has tattooed L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E. With them he tells the story of right hand, left hand, pantomiming a battle between the two forces where Love ultimately triumphs. Powell is not a realistic character, but a mythic one - H-A-T-E in the flesh. He's a honey-tongued fiend around easily seduced adults, and a cartoonish Big Bad Wolf when alone with the children.

Laughton always emphasizes the innocence of John and Pearl even in the horror of their circumstances. Their mother is dead - a scene of morbid, horrific beauty shows her body at the bottom of a river, peacefully swaying among the reeds with a slit in her throat - and a devilish madman pursues them. The Night of the Hunter often adopts the naive perspective of the children - as in the incredible sequence where they flee Powell on a riverboat. The river is an obviously artificial set made with expressionist, dreamy exaggeration. Pearl sings eerily as the current carries them from danger - the moon and stars appear magically close while storybook animals graze on the shore. The children hear snatches of lullabies drifting from windows of passing farm houses, and see the silhouette of Reverend Powell on the horizon, relentlessly in pursuit. "Don't he never sleep", John wonders in terror. It's like a classic Disney musical took a very dark turn.

The children find shelter with Rachel Cooper, the old woman whose warning against false prophets we heard at the film's beginning. She has taken in several other vagabond children, raising them as her own. Lillian Gish, who had captivated audiences decades earlier in the silent melodramas of D.W. Griffith, is marvelous as Rachel. She's the only adult immune to Powell's snakelike charms, and his equally powerful antithesis - a strong, unshakable force for good, protecting the innocent against evil. "I'm a strong tree with branches for many birds," she says, "I'm good for something in this world and I know it too."

In the dead of night Powell appears in Rachel's yard, singing the gospel song "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms". In his voice the song becomes a threat, a menace to the sleeping children inside. Rachel sits on the porch with a shotgun, undaunted. She begins singing along, redeeming the lyrics as a sincere expression of faith. The duet becomes a showdown of good versus evil, one of the most powerful in film history.

The Night of the Hunter is among the great American movies, and a personal favorite of mine. It is beautiful and frightening, unforgettable for its cinematography, performances, and boldly unconventional storytelling.

Babette's Feast

Hello everyone! I've been on an extended (and unplanned) break from writing recently, but promise to return to regular blogging in the coming weeks!

And I was recently able to do a bit of writing elsewhere - I was honored by the opportunity to write a review of Babette's Feast for Chris Williams's blog on films and faith, Chrisicisms! You can read the review here.

The Films of Hayao Miyazaki: Part 2

Castle in the Sky (1986)

Hayao Miyazaki's follow up to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind shares many similarities with its predecessor. Like Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky is set in a fantasy world that is equally of the past and the future. 19th century mining towns and farms exist alongside futuristic flying airships. The world of Castle in the Sky is designed with a steampunk aesthetic, equally inspired by medieval and Victorian European architecture and Flash Gordon sci-fi serials. Also like Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky has thinly veiled anti-nuclear power themes, along with Miyazaki's usual concern for respect and conservation of the natural world. However, Castle in the Sky is a breezier film than Nausicaa - more of a simple adventure story, where Nausicaa was a complex, Campbellian epic. It's still an adventure on a huge scale, but one that tells a straightforward good vs. evil story with broad humor and lighthearted characters.

It's a terrific adventure story too, a thrilling swashbuckler set in the endless skies instead of the high seas. Miyazaki's love of flight finds perhaps its most joyous expression here. The majority of Castle in the Sky takes place among the clouds - he clearly delights in animating a variety of retro-futuristic flying machines, and the landscape of the sky with its drifting clouds and roiling storms. Laputa, the titular castle in the sky (its name taken from Jonathan Swift's flying island in Gulliver's Travels), is one of Miyazaki's most marvelous creations. Laputa is an Atlantis of the sky, a lost city capable of terrible power. It's been overtaken by nature, watched over by a lone robot who tends to its vast gardens, a proto WALL-E. Miyazaki's imagination, and his skill in bringing his imaginings to life with rich beauty and detail, is astonishing.

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

A big change of direction in Miyazaki's career. My Neighbor Totoro is unlike Miyazaki's previous films - where they were expansive, packed with action and conflict, Totoro is small in scope and essentially plotless. Despite its fantasy elements, Totoro exists in a real time and place, Japan in the 1950s. There are no villains, no battles, no big conflicts - just a regular family and a few magical creatures, whose existence is casually accepted.

Even those who have never seen a Miyazaki film might recognize Totoro, who has become internationally iconic. And no wonder - he's such an adorably designed creature, with his fat, round body, short arms and legs, and expressive mouth and eyes, which can be tiny or huge depending on his mood.

His behavior makes him even more endearing. I suspect that the best children's characters - Winnie the Pooh is another example - take themselves entirely seriously, no matter how comical they are. Totoro is never buffoonish or a jokester. Even in his most absurd moments - being alarmed by a toddler's roar despite his enormous size, attempting to keep dry from the rain by placing a small leaf on his head - he's very serious, which makes him all the more lovable. Part of Totoro's appeal, too, is that he's never explained. Is he a forest spirit? Is he a figment of the children's imagination? Miyazaki does not give him a backstory, or any psychological explanation. He just is. The young protagonists accept his existence with quick delight, and children watching the film will, too. Some things are more enchanting when left unexplained.

He's not the only wonderful creature in the film, either. There are the smaller Totoros, nervous and bunny-like in appearance, who scuttle after their giant friend like ducklings. Then there's the Catbus, a twelve-legged feline transport for the spirit world, with eyes like headlights and furry seats on the inside. His enormous Cheshire grin is mildly frightening and delightfully weird.

Every time one of these magical beings appears, My Neighbor Totoro rises to a whole new level of delight - but even without them, this would have been a great film. My Neighbor Totoro might be the best film about childhood ever made. The two central characters, young sisters, are among the most convincing children in animation. They act like real, energetic kids, exploring their new house and its grounds with ecstatic happiness and curiosity. Satsuki, the eldest, is the smart, responsible elder sister. She loves her sister and watches out for her, despite occasional annoyance with her. Mei is the younger sibling, always following Satsuki and clumsily imitating all she does and says. Mei in particular is a triumph of character animation. Her features may be cartoonish, but there is incredible realism to her expressions and movements. When she runs, stumbles, and crawls, she has the life-like physicality of a toddler, something that I imagine must be difficult to capture in animation.

My Neighbor Totoro is all about the everyday feelings and sensations of being a kid. How the smallest things could be a source of wonder - an acorn discovered on the ground, wiggling your fingers at tadpoles in a puddle; or of fear - a dark staircase leading to an attic, a storm shaking the windowpanes. It also expresses the uncomprehending sadness of children that life can sometimes be unfair. Satsuki and Mei's beloved mother is in the hospital for an extended stay, and both are afraid and angry that she cannot be safe at home. A scene where Mei cries in scared frustration is heart-piercing without resorting to any melodrama or manipulation, the moment just seems so real. With perhaps the exception of Malick's Tree of Life, I've never seen children represented so well on film. Even more so than its cuddly creatures, I suspect that is the true reason why My Neighbor Totoro strikes a chord with so many people. In many of its particulars it's very tied to Japanese life and culture, but it captures something universally relatable and deeply human.

The animation is just gorgeous, too. The animation style is softer than Miyazaki's previous films, with less bold colors and clear lines. Many frames look like a watercolor painting. My Neighbor Totoro beautifully evokes the Japanese countryside, the green foliage and fields, the buzzing insects, the changing quality of light as long afternoons draw to a close.

If it's not already obvious, My Neighbor Totoro is a movie that I hold dear. I loved it as a kid, and still do as an adult. It's a modest but masterful work of art.

Viewing Journal - May 2016 #5

Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman, United Kingdom, 2016)

I'm now convinced that Whit Stillman was born to write and direct Jane Austen adaptations. While watching Love & Friendship I realized he's been making Austen stories all along - comedies of manners that are both satirical and affectionate - only in contemporary settings. His unique wit flourishes even more in the 1790s, and when matched with Austen's beautifully drawn characters. I haven't yet read Lady Susan, which Love & Friendship is adapted from, but in some ways it's an atypical Austen story. Lady Susan is a devious and cheerfully amoral character, a social climber with a genius for manipulation. She begins and ends the film unrepentantly horrible, but she is so witty and charismatic that we can't help but be impressed by her scheming ways. Kate Beckinsale clearly had a blast playing this character, delivering Lady Susan's politely wicked dialogue with virtuosic comic timing. Love & Friendship also has a welcome absurdist, irreverent streak, more reminiscent of Oscar Wilde or screwball comedy than Jane Austen. Yet, more than any other Austen adaptation I've seen, Love & Friendship captures her humor - her genius for mining comedy out of the gap between what people say and what they actually mean. It's one of the funniest movies I've seen in ages.

Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, United States / Hong Kong, 1973)

Despite considering myself a fan of Hong Kong kung fu flicks, I had never seen a single one starring the legendary Bruce Lee. Clearly I needed to correct this oversight. Enter the Dragon is a collaboration between East and West - made in Hong Kong with a local crew, but filmed in English with an American director and co-stars. It's a genre hybrid as well, both a martial arts extravaganza and a James Bond-style espionage thriller, with influences of so-called "blaxploitation" and psychedelia. About every B-movie genre popular in America or Hong Kong circa 1973 shows up in Enter the Dragon in one form or another. This democratic blending of East and West is typical of Lee, a citizen of both Hong Kong and the United States who was passionate about spreading the philosophy of martial arts across the globe. Enter the Dragon is also a total mess, though an exuberantly fun mess. I now see why Bruce Lee was such a star. He's not only an astonishing athlete but a magnetic screen presence. There's a mischief and wily intelligence in his eyes, and his lightning quick movements are mesmerizing. His body zigs when you expect it to zag; his bird-like shrieks in battle are amusing and terrifying.

The Most Dangerous Game (Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel, United States, 1932)

I love these horror-thrillers made in the early 30s, before the Production Code clamped down on what Hollywood films could show. Though tame by today's ultra-violent standards, The Most Dangerous Game remains an entertaining thriller that must have shocked audiences of 1932. Based on a famous and influential short story (which I have yet to read) with a perfectly simple, sinister premise: a wealthy madman and big game hunter entraps shipwrecked people on his private island to hunt them. If they survive a single night, he will release them - but none have survived before! Though it's only an hour long, The Most Dangerous Game spends much of its runtime building up to the hunt, as shipwrecked survivors are trapped inside Count Zaroff's gothic castle. The evil Zaroff is played by an over-the-top Leslie Banks; his bug-eyed expressions and preposterous Russian accent are difficult to take seriously but quite entertaining, especially next to Joel McCrea's stiffly stoic leading man. The really good parts arrive in the final twenty minutes, in a cat-and-mouse showdown in the jungle. The Most Dangerous Game was filmed on the same sets as King Kong - Kong would use the sets during the day, and Game at night. It's clearly an artificial jungle, but with all the grandiose charm and dream-like exaggeration of Old Hollywood. It's the perfect setting for an action-packed climax, as our heroes set elaborate booby traps, flee from hounds across logs bridging canyons, and do battle at the edge of a giant waterfall. The final fight is unusually realistic for the time, with sweaty, flailing desperation that looks unchoreographed.

Flirting (John Duigan, Australia, 1991)

Ignore the frivolous title. Flirting is the rare teenage comedy that treats its adolescent characters with dignity, as intelligent and thoughtful people. In 1965 Australia, two boarding schools, one all male and one all female, face each other across a lake. Danny is a gawky kid, intelligent, not athletic, teased by fellow students, though he's mostly unfazed by them. Thandiwe has just arrived to Australia from Uganda, and stands out from her peers for her race, her sophistication and irreverent humor. Both are attracted by the rebellious qualities of the other, and over a series of awkward and charming encounters grow to love each other. Flirting is the kind of well-observed film where even minor characters come alive as real, specific people, where you will laugh and cringe with fond recognition at their behavior. Noah Taylor and Thandie Newton give sensitive, lively performances as the leads, while Nicole Kidman and a baby-faced Naomi Watts appear in small early roles. Director John Duigan brings to Flirting a quiet beauty unique for its genre - like when Danny sneaks out at night to meet Thandiwe, rowing across a shimmering starlit lake out of a fairy tale.

Viewing Journal - May 2016 #4

Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1960)

Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film. -Werner Herzog

There's no argument against Breathless being a trendsetter. Its fourth wall breaks, sporadic cuts, and meandering approach to a crime narrative - spending more time on digressive conversations and mundane moments than suspense or melodrama - showed the film world of 1960 that not all films need to be made the same way. Film could break free of adherence to classical literary or theatrical storytelling. Breathless was a phenomenon among critics and movie lovers. It has inspired many subsequent classics, among them Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, Malick's Badlands, Kar-wai's Chungking Express, and Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

But trends fade, and stylistic innovations cease to be shocking if not built on a solid foundation. Once the initial buzz of its 60s chic-cool wears off, Breathless is a massive bore. Michel is among the most obnoxious protagonists I can think of. He's a try-hard poser and petty thief who whines when women don't immediately give him sex. Of course, great films can have unlikable main characters if they offer insight or hard-earned compassion, but I suspect I was supposed to be dazzled by Michel and his cynical affectations. I was not. Breathless flaunts its male chauvinism like a badge of honor. Women are persistently objectified, and Michel's sort-of girlfriend, Patricia, is a spineless "unfaithful woman" and a nonsensically written character.

I could forgive a lot if Breathless was fun, but despite all its spontaneous stylistic flourishes I found it insufferably tedious. Dialogue rotates between passive aggressive flirtations and inane philosophical non-sequiturs. The unconventional editing obliterates many rules about how to edit a film, but without much purpose beyond breaking the rules. Its random jump cuts and narrative elisions have little beauty or meaning in themselves. Indeed, Breathless as a whole seems intentionally devoid of meaning except when compared in a critical framework to other, more conventional films. I am uninterested in that approach to art. I would take a well-crafted generic film over this any day - or a non-generic film that actually has intrinsic meaning.

Regardless, I would never discourage a cinephile from watching Breathless. It is an important film for its place in the history of the medium, and my irritation seems to be the minority response. Jean-Luc Godard and I just don't get along. As far as French New Wave filmmakers go, I'll stick with Truffaut, Varda and Melville. Their films are every bit as clever as Godard's, but have real soul.

Carol (Todd Haynes, United States, 2015)

Todd Haynes strikes me as unique among contemporary filmmakers, in that his films are often just as influenced by artworks of different mediums as by other films. Carol, his latest, is set in the 1950s, but aesthetically shows less in common with melodramatic and romantic films made during the decade than it does with photography and paintings. Todd Haynes has cited 50s New York photographers such as Saul Leiter and Vivan Maier as inspirations, and even though I know next to nothing about photography, their influence on Carol's cinematography is apparent.

Many shots in Carol also reminded me of the paintings of Edward Hopper.

The influence of great photographers and painters of mid-century America gives Carol a unique visual appeal. There is little nostalgic sheen in its portrayal of 1950s New York, which looks grimy and grey, though enlivened by brightly colored women's fashions of the era. But Haynes and cinematographer Edward Lachman's borrowing of other artists' visual motifs is for more than just style. In both Saul Leiter's photography and Carol, people are often photographed behind reflective windows. These images show both the private world - individuals alone with their thoughts - and a bustling public world, separate but existing in the same place. And like in Edward Hopper's paintings, Carol often shoots characters from afar in public spaces, making us voyeuristic observers of people in moments of reflection. Through its cinematography, Carol shows private worlds existing within a public sphere; it also makes us aware that these individuals are always being watched by society at large, and must be cautious lest they reveal too much.

Carol is an adaptation of The Price of Salt, a 1952 novel by Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith was best known for her thrillers about sociopaths, such as Strangers on a Train and the Tom Ripley books. The Price of Salt is unique among her work because the thriller elements are minimized, and unique among 1950s literature because it is a forthright lesbian romance with a hopeful ending. Lesbian fiction did exist at the time, but usually was coded in its language and ended in tragedy, punishing the characters for their transgression and restoring moral order (or just appeasing censors). Highsmith published the novel under a pseudonym - she did not want to be labeled as a lesbian author, but she was gay and much of the story was veiled autobiography. Though I have not read The Price of Salt, it is clear that Carol's characters and insights are derived from lived experience.

Carol is a love story about Therese, a shopgirl, and the titular Carol. They meet at the department store and Therese is immediately drawn to this striking, intelligent woman, though it takes a while before she realizes why. Carol is among the most moving on-screen love stories of recent years for a variety of reasons, not least of all how well-drawn the two women are. The disparities between them are vast. Therese is younger, middle-class, inexperienced and uncertain of herself. Carol is middle-aged, wealthy, experienced and confident. One is hesitantly engaged, one is undergoing a divorce and custody battle of a beloved daughter. The initial stages of their romance are more of a one-sided seduction, the elegant and wily Carol drawing in the awestruck Therese with ease. But Carol's society lady manners hide vulnerabilities that slowly reveal themselves - and as Therese grows in confidence and discovers inner strength, it becomes apparent that Carol is the one with everything to lose. Carol beautifully captures the danger of falling in love - giving your self to another, for them to accept or reject. This is especially perilous in Therese and Carol's case, where they must keep a low profile within society or else their relationship will incur dangers other than heartbreak. It culminates in a lovely series of last shots, where they are finally on equal footing as their eyes meet.

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are wonderful. Mara communicates so much with only her eyes and gestures. I would say "Blanchett has never been better!", except she's been this perfect before - as Galadriel, as Bob Dylan, as Queen Elizabeth. What an insanely talented woman! Their performances, along with Todd Hayne's beautiful and sensitive direction and Phyllis Nagy's excellent script, made Carol one of the truly great films of last year.

The Films of Hayao Miyazaki: Part 1

Over the next few weeks, I will be re-watching and reviewing all the feature films of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, internationally acclaimed as perhaps the world's greatest animator and among my personal favorite filmmakers.

Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)

The Castle of Cagliostro was Hayao Miyazaki's first feature length animation, though he had been working in the medium for years creating television episodes. It's based on a pre-existing property - the Lupin III manga series, which had been popular in Japan since the 1960s, inspiring a television show and several films. All the Lupin III adventures center around a mischievous gentleman thief and his escapades, which unfold in a fantastic Eastern vision of continental Europe inspired by pulp serials and James Bond. The Castle of Cagliostro is less purely a result of Miyazaki's imagination than his later films - many of the themes and character types that would define his work are not present in this more generic adventure. It feels less like a deeply personal passion project than a job for hire from a budding animator. The animation, too, looks more cartoony than his later films, lacking their richness and painterly beauty.

Yet it's equally clear that Miyazaki gave his all to make The Castle of Cagliostro the best film it could be. The animation might be cheaper, but it's excellent considering the budgetary limitations. The backgrounds have real scale, depth and detail, and the simply-designed, caricatured characters are fun and expressive in a style unique to cartoons. The silly adventure story is generic, but in the best way - it revels in the most fun elements of its genre. The Castle of Cagliostro is restlessly action-packed and gleefully goofy. It is filled with all the most delightful cliches of swashbuckling adventure stories - trap doors and secret passageways, damsels in distress and nefarious henchmen, car chases and heroes dangling from great heights - all done with high-spirited style. It may look simple or unaccomplished compared to Miyazaki's more ambitious subsequent work, but taken on its own terms The Castle of Cagliostro is marvelous fun.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

Like The Castle of Cagliostro, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is based on a pre-existing source - this time one of Miyazaki's creation, an epic manga series he wrote. He compressed and simplified his sprawling saga into one two-hour film, and the result, although not Miyazaki's first film, is the true introduction to his unique vision as an artist.

Nausicaa is set in a futuristic world that is equal parts Star Wars and Mad Max. A long-ago man-made disaster has poisoned the earth. Small pockets of civilization are threatened by ever-expanding toxic jungles, lethal to humans and inhabited by enormous insects. Our titular character is the princess of one of these human strongholds, the Valley of the Wind, an agricultural, utopian society amid the wastelands. The peaceful Valley is disrupted by an airship crash-landing in their midst, carrying strange cargo - an enormous beating heart. The ship belongs to the Tolmekians, a military state who are planning to grow a giant, a living weapon of mass destruction to wipe out the toxic jungle. We learn that these ancient giants were what destroyed so much of the earth in the first place.

Nausicaa is a big step forward from The Castle of Cagliostro in sophistication. It tells a complicated story on a massive scale, with urgently expressed environmental and pacifist themes. It struck me on this viewing that, in a certain sense, Nausicaa is the type of film Avatar wanted to be. It is both an action-packed adventure and an unabashed message movie. Yet Avatar swerved into annoying pontification in expressing its environmental, anti-colonial messages, and was simplistic and hypocritical in its us-versus-them violent conflict. In Nausicaa, Miyazaki's concerns arise organically out of the world and characters he creates. The reasons for warfare are not simple. The most villainous characters in Nausicaa have humanity and legitimate reasons for the beliefs they hold - their faith in the ends justifying the means is what leads them astray. Even the hideous giant insects are allowed to have dignity; they are never portrayed by Miyazaki as other than dangerous wild animals, but they have nobility in their animal natures. Many films preach non-violence while reveling in violence, but Nausicaa consistently upholds empathy and self-sacrifice over force and might.

Miyazaki protagonists are often brave, intelligent young women, and Nausicaa is among the most memorable. She is feminine and powerful, skilled but humble. Though an excellent fighter, she almost always prefers to be diplomatic - the one instance where she does erupt in violent anger nearly leads to disaster. Her vengeful fury would be presented as empowering by many a less thoughtful film, especially since the reasons behind it are entirely sympathetic, but Miyazaki is too conscientious a storyteller to make things that easy.

Hayao Miyazaki's imagination as a creator of worlds seems boundless. The animation, while it does not have quite the same painterly richness as Miyazaki films to come, offers up sequence after sequence of astonishing beauty and originality. I'm especially fond of the design of the Ohmu, enormous trilobite-like insects whose eyes glow blue when peaceful and red when enraged. Their scale and power is awesome in a way only a master animator could capture. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind pulls me in to the world it creates with each viewing. This is a major work from a very special artist and storyteller, though even better was to come.

Viewing Journal - May 2016 #3

The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has, Poland, 1965)

Two soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars stumble into an old abandoned inn as battle rages around them. There they discover a huge ancient book, filled with enigmatic pictures. It's the tale of a Captain of the Walloon Guard (a title he pompously brings up whenever possible) traveling across the mountains of Spain to Madrid. He gets lost in a rocky wasteland and stops at another old abandoned inn. Staying at the inn are two Tunisian princesses, who claim to have never seen a man before and beg the flabbergasted Captain to marry them both. The princesses force him to drink from a chalice made of a human skull; he awakes the next morning under a gallows where two convicted thieves are hanging. The poor Captain then wanders unwillingly through some kind of purgatory, one where everyone he meets wants to either kill him or tell him stories. Yet no matter how many stories he hears, the Captain always ends up back at the gallows, underneath the corpses of the thieving Zoto brothers.

I've often heard The Saragossa Manuscript compared to a Russian nesting doll, which is as good a description as any. Like a Matryoshka doll, The Saragossa Manuscript is made of stories within stories within stories. "Let me tell you my story," is how it always begins, but within the story that one character is narrating, a different character they meet will start telling their own tale. There are monks and sheiks, noblemen and women, bandits and phantoms, cabalists and Inquisitors; their stories involve duels, affairs, hauntings and supernatural trials. Getting lost within The Saragossa Manuscript is the point. Over a runtime of three hours, it dives deeper into layers upon layers of digressions, then unexpectedly will work backwards and re-emerge into a story begun an hour earlier in the film. There are many subterranean connections between the stories, as occurrences in one story will impact another, characters reappear in different guises, and similar events reoccur in a circuitous fashion. The Saragossa Manuscript has a similar impact on the viewer as the befuddled Captain - it is dizzying and disorienting, and though already lengthy it feels as if it could spin on for an eternity, ever weaving tales that are both new and always the same.

Thankfully, it's not as difficult as it sounds. Despite all its macabre imagery, The Saragossa Manuscript is playful and knowingly absurd. It fluidly dances between horror and melodrama and slapstick, always with a sense of delight at the infinite possibilities of storytelling. Though its rambling structure requires patience, The Saragossa Manuscript always pays it off with satisfying "a-ha!" moments of sudden clarity - only to pull the rug out from under your feet again with a wink. And I was thrilled to get lost in the rich world it created. Every image is busy - packed with bones and skulls, animals and people, talismans and esoteric knick-knacks, each suggesting stories of their own. At the end of its wild three hours, I was dazed but delighted.

Pride & Prejudice (Joe Wright, United Kingdom, 2005)

Period piece adaptations of British literature are often the stiffest and stuffiest movies around. Even many good ones feel theatrical instead of cinematic, with great actors in dress-up, their period-appropriate dresses and suits looking like they've just been taken out of shrink wrapping. From its first shot, this 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen's classic is notable for its liveliness and its immersive, detailed sense of a certain place and time. The dresses look worn, the houses look lived-in. People talk over and around each other like in real life, not like actors waiting for their cue. Joe Wright's camera is always on the move, circling through the rooms of the Bennett household, weaving through dancing and gossiping crowds in ballrooms. Stunning long takes are an earthier successor to the fluid camerawork of Max Ophuls's films.

As an adaptation of Austen's masterpiece it's quite good. Joe Wright is a very romantic and sensual filmmaker, and his Pride & Prejudice is more swooningly romantic than the book, or at least my reading of it. His Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy seem destined to be together from the start, despite their misunderstandings. In one fantastic flourish, as they dance together everyone else in the ballroom fades away. Mr. Darcy's disastrous first proposal is re-envisioned in the pouring rain, where the romantic longing and sexual tension are just as vivid as the angry, haughty words spoken. In the novel, the proposal scene is hilariously pathetic and sad; it never feels guaranteed that Elizabeth and Darcy will grow to love each other, let alone tolerate each other. This makes it all the more delightfully surprising when Elizabeth's tender feelings grow against her will, and all the funnier when these two very intelligent, very decent people are rudely awakened to how stubbornly wrong they can be.

But I don't mean to sound negative. Joe Wright's more romanticized vision is still a valid interpretation of the book, and it works well in the context of the movie. Partially because of how beautiful it is. The cinematography and Jean-Yves Thibaudet's score are exceedingly lovely, and the images of the English countryside are breathtaking. A well-cast ensemble brings life to Austen's characters - I think this is Keira Knightley's finest moment as an actress, she embodies Elizabeth Bennett's fierce intelligence, and her quietly passionate, decent sensibility. Pride & Prejudice is also director Joe Wright's best film by a significant margin, and among the finest Austen adaptations I've seen.