Movie Enthusiast Issue 60: New York Film Festival, Some Stars Are Born, First Man, and more
Writing
For The Weekly Standard I wrote about my visit to New York Film Festival—my first time ever going! I saw seven movies total but two of them were duds (one sort of by my own fault; it’s surprisingly hard to care about a movie when you’ve exhausted yourself after five days of running around New York subsisting mostly on pastries from the Jewish bakery at Columbus Circle—just to be clear, I regret none of the choices I made on this trip). I didn’t go as deep as I might have on any of the movies I did write about (Burning, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Hotel by the River, Grass, and Diamantino), though this was in the nature of the assignment, which was to write more of a cultural-interest piece than longform criticism. I may share some additional thoughts on these movies in future newsletters as they start to open in theaters!
Watching
Oof, I have a lot of catching up to do. Time for a speed round!
A Star Is Born (1954)
At what seems like a crucial narrative moment in the Judy Garland version of A Star Is Born, the film is interrupted by a montage of still images with audio tracks playing underneath. An odd choice, for a three-hour-long movie, it would seem. Then I learned that this sequence is a reconstruction of footage that was cut from the original and had to be restored using production still and the still-extant audio tracks. I also learned that after director George Cuckor had already shot significant amounts of footage, Warner Bros. decided the project ought to be made on CinemaScope so he had to scrap everything he had already filmed and start over.
A Star Is Born (2018)
Good job, Bradley Cooper! But lest I succumb to grade inflation, I do want to press him on the back half of the movie. I forget who I’m pulling this line of critique from, but I agree with whoever it was that said that the relationship dynamic between Jackson and Ally is what’s key to the movie working, so even if BCoop ultimately wants the movie to be more about his character’s downfall than Lady Gaga’s character’s rise, he still owes it to the story to keep Ally in the picture for Jackson’s decline arc. To put it another way: the problem isn’t that the back half of the movie isn’t about her, it’s that the first half of the movie is about them and the back half eschews the them-ness of the story to its own detriment.
Wait, there’s more. All the filmmaking choices in this movie up to and including the first performance of Shallow onstage are pretty great Then it all goes downhill! Coherent editing? Who needs it! The rule of 180? Unnecessary! Consistent blocking? What is this, a horror film made by a recent MFA graduate trying to mask the paucity of his ideas with impeccable mise-en-scène?! One can say, “ah, but you see, the drunken haze of the middle 45 minutes of the movie is a deliberate choice to bring the form and content in line with one another.” Okay sure, even if that’s what he was going for, that doesn’t mean it was the right choice. I will, however, defend the ending of this movie, which I think sticks the landing with that perfect three-shot sequence (onstage—flashback—onstage). I was honestly surprised to find there are people who thought Ally’s final performance should have run uninterrupted!
Carnival of Souls (1962)
This is my favorite kind of horror, i.e., not a horror movie made by a recent MFA graduate trying to mask the paucity of his ideas with impeccable mise-en-scène. Light on the gore-’n-thrills, heavy on the buildup and atmosphere, maybe it makes a Point somewhere along the way but if it does that’s besides the point. I like how there’s really no firm explanation given for anything—there are just these souls, and they, like, hang out at a carnival on Friday nights? I mean the ending makes it clear why the heroine is being haunted, but you probably guessed what was going on by the time the title card appeared. It’s also nice that the heroine is actually a cool person and not just some generic final girl! At least, I’m impressed by anyone who can play an organ as elaborate as this one:
First Man (2018)
What a nice, human-sized movie. I have no points of reference, having seen no other drawn-from-real-life space exploration movies and also not knowing enough about the moon landing and its runup to be able to evaluate this movie for historical accuracy. Damien Chazelle’s direction is much more mature here than it was in Whiplash or La La Land. He turns down every opportunity to insert a grand gesture where a smaller gesture will suffice. Each of his space missions is filmed in tight closeups, locked more or less on Armstrong’s perspective so that the most we ever see of space or the surface of the earth as seen from space is always clipped by the edges of a window. (The two exceptions that I noted: the dramatic pan across the surface of the moon and the one bird’s-eye POV crane shot pulling back above Lance & co after they’ve made their Small Step.)
I think it’s smart of Chazelle not to try to wring much drama out of events that everyone watching the movie already knows are going to come to pass. His movie isn’t triumphal. There are rivers of grief coursing through it. Visually, it’s a movie of strong shadows, with only occasional moments where golden light bathes the frame and lifts everyone’s spirits. Where the movie may falter, I think, is in the smallness of its ideas about grief or death. They’re not exactly revelatory, and I wonder how deeply people with similar stories of loss were able to identify with the film. But like I said, this is a nice, human-sized movie, and not even artists by virtue of their vocation necessarily feel called to process these heavy topics on any larger scale.
Wings of Desire (1987)
Like Three Colors Red I will owe this a rewatch before I can claim it as one of my favorite movies. Buuuuuut: it’s pretty dang good. For lack of being able to articulate my feelings so early on a Monday morning, I do want to draw attention to the sound design of this movie. Can you imagine it having any of the same power if, for instance, the dialogue were recorded in such a way that you didn’t hear the physicality of language production? (the breaths, the clicking of tongues against teeth and lips, the raspy throats, etc.) Sound is one thing that frequently gets overlooked in movies like this, but it’s absolutely essential. It makes total sense that Claire Denis was assistant director on this movie. Listen—not even watch, but listen—to any of her own movies and you’ll hear her putting the lie to the idea that film is foremost a visual medium. But again, it’s tricky: the best sound design makes you forget that the movie you’re watching could possibly have sounded any other way.
Reading
“One of the things he says to me a lot is, you know, ‘flies with honey,’ ” his producer, Adele Romanski, another former film-school classmate, told me. “I think that’s a life philosophy that he extends to the work.” This is a useful stance if you are interested in getting actors to open up, to bare themselves. The stereotype of the American director-auteur may be of the demanding genius who bullies his actors into transcendent performances, but Jenkins prefers a nurturing approach: “I try to find a language that the actor can participate in,” he says. “There has to be a language for every single person on set.” These efforts translate onto the screen. But what exactly is it that’s being translated?
—on Barry Jenkins’s filmmaking, his love for Claire Denis, and If Beale Street Could Talk
Coming Soon
Have you heard of economist-filmmaker Patrick Wang? I only learned about his 2010 film In the Family earlier this week and am just now hearing that his newest movie, A Bread Factory, about a small-town arts center and its surrounding community, is pretty hot stuff. It screens in two parts, each two hours long. I’m always amazed at how much in the world of cinema I miss in spite of how closely I try to follow every new director and development of note.
Well the first half of this headline was promising: Laura Dern and Allison Janney will co-star as sisters in Breaking News in Yuba County, from the director of…The Girl on the Train 😐
WHY ARE WE REBOOTING PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN
Paul Feig, perhaps capitalizing on the success of Crazy Rich Asians, will direct Last Christmas, a romantic comedy with CRA’s Henry Golding, Emilia Clarke, and Emma Thompson, to be released November 2019. Yes, it is reportedly very George Michael-inspired!
Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton are attached to George Miller’s next project, titled Three Thousand Years of Longing and apparently involving a genie. BUT WHO WILL BE THE GENIE?? (Tilda, obviously)
Every generation gets the Emma adaptation it deserves, and this one’s will star The VVitch’s Anya Taylor-Joy.