Steven Rubio's Online Life

cold war (pavel pawlikowski, 2018)

Sometimes an actor commands the screen with such remarkable presence that you can't keep your eyes off of them. If it's a new actor, then you know this will be the performance that makes them a star. Such is the work of Joanna Kulig in Cold War, and indeed she won several awards at festivals for this film. But Kulig had made more than 20 movies before Cold War, including two with Pavel Pawlikowski, one of which, Ida, I had seen (she had a supporting role in that film). She had worked on stage for many years, as well as several television series. She was already in her mid-30s when Cold War was filmed. In other words, her performance here did not come out of nowhere, and it didn't make her name ... she was already known, if not to me.

Still, imagine how great she is to elicit such a response. She plays a singer, Zula, in the film, and right from the start, people are commenting on Zula's unique appeal. Ten minutes in, one character remarks that "she has something", and he's right. Tomasz Kot is very good as well as Wiktor, a pianist who loves Zula. But when both are on the screen, it's Kulig who has our attention.

The film is beautifully shot in black and white, in the Academy ratio of 4:3. It takes place in post-war Europe, when the Cold War emerged, and the look of the film seems right for the time.

Pawlikowski makes good use of music, including one scene that makes Bill Haley seem like the most liberating of rock and rollers:

Cold War is #415 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century.

film fatales #96: the lure (agnieszka smoczynska, 2015)

This is the eighth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2020-21", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 6th annual challenge, and my second time participating (last year can be found at "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-20"). Week 8 is called Women Directed Horror Week:

When people think horror creators, a lot of the big names tend to be men. Carpenter, Hooper, Romero, Craven, Argento, etc. And sure, these men have created some fantastic works, but it often leaves horror films directed by women underappreciated. In an effort to combat this, let's round out October by observing the greatness that female-driven horror has to offer.

This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen horror film directed by a woman.

Well, this is an odd one. In the end, it's delightful, in a gory sort of way, but I admit for much of the film, I thought it was just plain loony. After seeing it, I felt positive, and thinking about it made my impression even more so.

I assumed it was a horror film ... that's the challenge, after all. The front of the Blu-ray box gives little hint of what is coming, although I see now that the mysterious, vague character is a mermaid. Reading the back of the box only prepared me for what seemed impossible:

This genre-defying horror-musical mash-up ... follows a pair of carnivorous mermaid sisters drawn ashore to explore life on land in an alternate 1980s Poland. Their tantalizing siren songs and otherworldly auras make them overnight sensations as nightclub singers ... [a] darkly feminist twist on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid".

It might be that last part that got me ... how could Disney fit into this? The answer is that he can't, because Agnieszka Smocznska, in her debut feature, is up to things that would never enter the Disney world.

Horror-musical ... I wasn't encouraged. But in fact, it works. Part of it is that while the mermaid sisters do cast a bit of a spell on people, no one treats them as anything other than beings with a special talent. There is no hatred of the other ... once it is learned they can sing, they get a job in a nightclub, and if their legs sometimes transform into a tail, well, all the more interesting.

In its fantastic way, The Lure tells a simpler tale than the above would suggest. One of the mermaids wants to become human, and both of the sisters are regularly confronted with the restrictions placed on young women who want to decide their lives for themselves. Yes, as mermaids they are accepted, but a mermaid who wants to be human is not.

Often a movie will be described as "Like X, only Y", so a movie like Midnight Special is "Like Close Encounters, only dark". I don't know how to make that work with The Lure. It's like Near Dark, only the story takes off from The Little Mermaid, and there's sex like in The Hunger, and oh yeah, its audaciousness is kinda funny at times. I often complain about movies that require multiple viewings to "get them". In the case of The Lure, I look forward to another viewing, just to take in its wonderful oddness.

what i watched last week

Three Colors: Red (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994). And so I finish the Three Colors Trilogy. I suppose I liked this one the best, but “liked” is the operative word here. I didn’t love it. The two leads (Irène Jacob and Jean-Louis Trintignant) are good, and while the various plots are confusing at the beginning, it’s rather charming the way they come together in the end (and also charming the way Kieślowski brings together the main characters from all the films in the trilogy at the end). I said after the first film, Blue, that I reserved the right to raise my grade if I ever saw it again … I definitely feel like I’m missing something. #471 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the top 1000 films of all time.

The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940). The movie is so entrenched in the film canon that it’s become difficult over time to remember any differences between it and the equally-praised Steinbeck novel. John Ford’s reputation is probably better than Steinbeck’s at the moment, but that kind of thing is always subject to change. Tom Joad is one of the great characters of American culture, and Henry Fonda does a perfect job with the part, even if, like his daughter Jane, you can sometimes see him figuring out how to best play the character … he’s not a method actor. John Carradine is the surprise here; his hammy acting usually draws attention to itself in bad ways, but he’s much more subtle and moving as Preacher Casy. (Carradine has always fascinated me, due mostly to his claim that he was in more movies than any other actor. Early in his career, he was in A-pictures like this one and Ford’s Stagecoach, but by the 1960s, he appeared in one crappy horror movie after another. While he was still a favorite of Ford’s, turning up in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence and Cheyenne Autumn, other titles from the 60s include Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, Hillbillys in a Haunted House, Las Vampiras, The Astro-Zombies, and Blood of Dracula’s Castle.) Jane Darwell won the acting Oscar as Ma Joad, and she’s not nearly as awful as Pauline Kael claimed (“impossibly fraudulent” was her phrase), but Judith Anderson in Rebecca should have won that award. There is so much to like about The Grapes of Wrath (Gregg Toland needs to be mentioned), and I can’t argue with those who would call it one of the greats, but I’m hesitant to go that far. #124 on the TSPDT list.

Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947). The stylized look of the film is striking, and the atmosphere of repressed eroticism is extremely intense. It’s all in the service of a story about trying to remake the world by separating yourself from it. The separation doesn’t work, and the contrasting acting styles of Deborah Kerr and Kathleen Byron show how different people react to their failures. Byron gets the more showy role, and she makes the most of it, but, as with the film as a whole, the lighting, camerawork, and directing do a lot to make the actors’ performances so good (Byron said that Powell “gave me half of my performance with the lighting”). Not everything works; Jean Simmons as a dark-skinned native looks weird, and her subplot isn’t much, either. But once you’ve seen Byron applying lipstick in close-up, you’ll forgive everything else. #145 on the TSPDT list.

The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973).

what i watched last week

Three Colors: White (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994). The second film in Kieślowski’s trilogy, and I’m still wondering what all the fuss is about. I felt over my head when watching the first film, Three Colors: Blue, and wondered if the film required a particular frame of mind. Still, Juliette Binoche was good, and I had a generally good reaction to the movie. White left me much colder, though. It’s something of a comedy, which I didn’t figure out until the movie was well underway, besides which it is supposed to be “anti-comedy”, whatever that is, so you can see why I was confused. I laughed out loud once (for those who have seen it: “Home at last!”), but it’s not meant to be ha-ha funny, so that’s not the problem. Julie Delpy’s character is such a bitch that I could barely stand it when she was on the screen (and that’s something, since I love Julie Delpy). The “hero’s” transformation from sad sack bum to moneyed capitalist to the King of Revenge struck me as just about as creepy as Delpy’s role as his ex-wife. Reading about the film, I can see the connection between what is happening to the hero, and Kieślowski’s own experiences as a Pole in France, which makes the movie more interesting … it’s a good film to think about after the fact. But when I have to go to Wikipedia to understand a film’s finer points, something is wrong, either with the film, or with me. #909 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the top 1000 films of all time.

Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932).

what i watched last week

Three Colors: Blue (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993). The first film in a trilogy, and the first I’ve seen directed by Kieślowski. I felt as I watched that I was in a bit over my head, but the film washes over you in a way that makes emotional sense by the conclusion. Juliette Binoche is in virtually every scene, so it’s a good thing she’s such a good actress. Early on, when she presents a stoic front to the world, she manages to suggest the emotions bubbling underneath. Kieślowski offers a variety of methods to show her re-emergence, but it’s Binoche who subtly makes us believe the gradual transformation back to something resembling her whole self. Kieślowski takes his time telling his story (not in length … it’s only 98 minutes, but there is no rushed feeling), and while some highly praise this film, I think you need to be in the right frame of mind for it to work on you. #501 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the top 1000 films of all time.

The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974).

The Damned United (Tom Hooper, 2009).