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Author Topic: September MDC Writeups - Best or Favorite Cinematography  (Read 31294 times)

smirnoff

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Re: September MDC Writeups - Best or Favorite Cinematography
« Reply #60 on: September 19, 2009, 11:43:06 PM »
The Double Life of Véronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski director & Slawomir Idziak cinematographer, 1991)



Unnecessary sidenote:

This rambling is based on a true story.

After you watch enough movies you start to get a rough idea of what you prefer. What style, what genre... even what actors and directors. I used to let this guide my decisions, with the idea that if I followed my nose I'd usually enjoy myself. And to that end, it worked. My DVD collection grew to more than a hundred strong, and only films that I considered truly great made the cut. Then I came to the Filmspotting forums. I saw that people were enjoying all sorts of films that I never would've considered watching. Some I had never even heard of. What's more, they were enjoying these films with infectious enthusiasm! It wasn't long before I had abandoned much of my well honed intuition, in the hopes I too would love these films.

My arrival at the forums coincided with another hugely influential event in my film watching life. The discovery of movies by mail. The forums may have put a sock in the mouth of my intuition, but my subscription to Netflix took it outside and killed it. No longer did I walk through a video store, choosing carefully the one movie on which my entire weekend's enjoyment hinged. Now I simply added to my queue anything and everything. If there was even a hint of a chance I could enjoy a film, I'd add it. I started adding directors' entire filmographies to my queue without so much as a glance at the plot or actors involved, just because I'd seen one of their movies and liked it. I told myself that particular tastes didn't matter, and that open mindedness was a more worthy virtue. I didn't know I was a bourbon drinker until I drank some bourbon, so why should movies be any different.

The rate at which I watched movies went up fivefold. This blinded me to the fact that my once stellar track record of picking winners had begun to decline, steeply. I think I convinced myself that there was value in seeing as many films as possible. It may even have been a point of pride. Luckily, it did eventually occur to me that I wasn't enjoying films like I used to. Though I was watching more films than ever before, my passion for them seemed to have evaporated. I couldn't deny it. I used to lovingly explore a dvd's extra content, and listen to the commentary tracks. Now I just hurriedly packed them up and tossed them in the mailbox.

I realized I'm a film lover, not a film critic. It's not my job to see everything. I still allow a small amount of outside influence in what I watch (the Bracket and MDC), but generally speaking I've reverted to watching only those films that I would pick up off the video store shelf. I've purged my netflix queue of anything that doesn't fall into that category. Lessons learned. Listen to your intuition. Time is too precious to watch just anything. You're more likely to enjoy a movie you've pick yourself than one recommended. It's a test of your taste in film. You'll be much more invested in proving yourself right than proving somebody else right. You don't want to be responsible for picking a bad movie, so you make sure you give it your full attention and it gets every benefit of the doubt.

Anyways, that's my story. I dunno why, but I felt compelled to tell it just now.


Actual Review:

The Double Life of Véronique is a floaty and cryptic film. Two identical looking women who have never met share an unknown bond. One lives in Poland, the other Paris. The film never explains what this link between them is, but it shows us the effects it has. For instance in one scene, when one woman feels pain so too does the other. Kind of like the enigmatic connection that you often hear existing between twins. It's an interesting aspect of the film that I would've liked to see develop into something more conclusive. Kieslowski though seemed to be content to leave it alone. By the end of the film it's meaning was really no less ambiguous to me than it was at the beginning.

I usually favour films with clear, strong narratives (among other things), so TDLOV may not have been the best movie for me in that regard. It's very much open to interpretation. It's not so much a story as it is a poem. One is told, the other read... if that makes any kind of sense. It's this openness that was probably the greatest stumbling block for me. I watched intently and tried to piece together something definite, something I could be certain about. Looking back, this probably wasn't the ideal approach. I'm not sure I can help it though. I tend listen to what the art has to say to me rather than consider what I have to say about the art.

Sam wrote an excellent review which I think really nails this film. Well worth a read if you want a better idea of what the film is.

For me it wasn't a perfect match, but it is a beautiful film to behold. I give it full marks on that front. :) Thanks for the assignment Sam. Hopefully my lackluster reaction wasn't too disappointing.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2009, 11:48:11 PM by smirnoff »

ferris

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Re: September MDC Writeups - Best or Favorite Cinematography
« Reply #61 on: September 19, 2009, 11:57:26 PM »
Loved the rambling side note.  I'm still at the "steller track record of picking winners declining steeply" stage :)

As for the film, I'd curious to see a few more screenshots?
"And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs" - Exodus 8:2 KJV
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oneaprilday

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Re: September MDC Writeups - Best or Favorite Cinematography
« Reply #62 on: September 19, 2009, 11:59:35 PM »
Anyways, that's my story. I dunno why, but I felt compelled to tell it just now.

I'm glad you did.  :)  It reminds me how much I like your personal marathons. You seem to choose those films not because of what others want but because of what you want and enjoy. And you have so much fun along the way that I think the rest of us can't help but experience your unabashed enjoyment, too. Yay for smirnoff marathons!

As for the film in question, you may not have completely loved it, but you clearly admire it, and your write-up is enough to make me much more curious than I have been. Gorgeous stills, too.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: September MDC Writeups - Best or Favorite Cinematography
« Reply #63 on: September 20, 2009, 12:16:26 AM »
Actually, being the heartless bastard I am I expected this reaction and it's kinda why I assigned it to you.  ;D

I'll agree it's ambiguous and floaty and that's the kind of stuff I love. I get that you don't prefer that kind of film and that's totally cool. I just wanted you to see the pretty pictures.  ;)

As for the film in question, you may not have completely loved it, but you clearly admire it, and your write-up is enough to make me much more curious than I have been. Gorgeous stills, too.
Check it out for sure, make it your impromptu dictation for the month.

smirnoff

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Re: September MDC Writeups - Best or Favorite Cinematography
« Reply #64 on: September 20, 2009, 12:22:00 AM »
Thanks guys :)

Actually, being the heartless bastard I am I expected this reaction and it's kinda why I assigned it to you.  ;D

I'll agree it's ambiguous and floaty and that's the kind of stuff I love. I get that you don't prefer that kind of film and that's totally cool. I just wanted you to see the pretty pictures.  ;)

That's cool. You never know for sure, there is always the chance of really connecting will a film outside of your norm. I'm glad to have watched it.

Speaking of pretty pictures, here's some more for ferris.





oneaprilday

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Re: September MDC Writeups - Best or Favorite Cinematography
« Reply #65 on: September 20, 2009, 12:31:35 AM »
As for the film in question, you may not have completely loved it, but you clearly admire it, and your write-up is enough to make me much more curious than I have been. Gorgeous stills, too.
Check it out for sure, make it your impromptu dictation for the month.

I'll watch it soon!

ferris

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Re: September MDC Writeups - Best or Favorite Cinematography
« Reply #66 on: September 20, 2009, 07:05:17 PM »
Låt den rätte komma in
(Let the Right One In)
(2008, Tomas Alfredson)


If you were to ask me a year ago to willfully watch a Swedish film about vampires with subtitles I’d say no thank you and watch Pulp Fiction again.  So here it is a year later and Filmspotting nation has opened my mind to the point where I was rewarded to one of the best movies of this decade – a very special film and one I’m negotiating a slot for in my Top 100.

I watched the movie three times.  Twice with subtitles and once with the subtitles turned off so I could focus more on the acting.






Preconceived notions:
I knew three things about this going in 1) the title, 2) Swedish and 3) Vampires.  I do pretty well avoiding trailers and chatter about this movie.  I really had no desire to see this.  The movie had the deck stacked against it from the start: the title of the film conjurs up the thought of a plot ripe with ritualistic hazing and programmatic, mindless violence.  It also came out right in the middle of the Twilight hype – critics love for LTROI seemed like the right snobby thing to like in reaction to the “Hollywood dribble spooned out for our two least respected demographics” (pre-pubesant girls and soccer moms).  Plus I’m not a fan of the horror genre at all.    But long after the Twilight hype died down it was clear this film had quite a following, to the point it was getting hard to ignore.   So when BlueVoid assigned this I was just curious enough to give it a go.







The experience of watching a film:

So I don’t know how other people watch a film, but my schedule allows so little time that movies have to earn it.  I go in with the attitude that each 15 minutes has to earn the next 15 minutes.  I’m on a mission to find new entries for my top 100.  If it’s clear that this film isn’t going to be in the running then I’m pretty quickly on to the next one.  I had my finger hovered over the stop button when it started going down the road of “troubled loner with divorced parents who gets picked on at school” – (ugh this again?) but the second the character Eli showed up everything changed.




Character counts
This movie was unlike anything I had anticipated.  The fact we were dealing with children here was a big surprise.  I was really expecting perhaps something like“Lost Boys with subtitles”.  What very quickly won me over was our two lead characters – played with such tenderness and vulnerability.  Especially great was the sweet awkwardness of their scenes together – made so much more meaningful and layered as the truth about Eli, what she was and the ambiguousness of her possible intentions came out.  There is a very delicate balance to what both of them have to pull off – especially Eli’s character who had to do horrible things and seem conflicted about it, but at the same time resigned to it.  Two much in either direction and it’s not believable.  




Subverts the Genre
I’m a bit weary of the term “subverts the genre” although it would be all too easy to drop that phrase here.   It seems like what we should be saying is “it actually was good” or making an argument to drop the concept of genre completely.  In this case what we really have is a story of two misfit children making a connection and trying to navigate their world with the deck stacked against them.  I think most people can related to Oskar - bullied and struggling for parents’ attention.  I think we can also remember that first childhood crush and how it’s bit like a dog chasing a car – there’s no way for it to end well.  In this case our ending:  whether or not it ends well it sort of up to your perception really.  But to say this isn't the horror genre is a bit of a misnomer as well.  We get a lesson on most of the standard vampire rules and behaviors.  But here they are done so differently I could be a movie about the trials of a handicapped teenager.







Great cinematography?
So this film was assigned to me for the great cinematography theme.  I am not an expert in what great cinematography is, but I will tell you this film took me right to 1982 in Stockholm, brought me right into what is great and awful about the environment and I loved being there.  Plus, I love snow and I also give a few extra points for settings in snow!
 
But no doubt this film has two of the most jaw dropping scenes I may have ever seen on film.  I hate to say even that much because I didn’t see either of these coming – and that was probably what made them great.  It’s not very often that I utter the word “wow…” out loud while watching a film.  I did it twice here.  Please don’t go into this movie waiting for them to happen.  








Sound design
My habit is to watch DVDs on my laptop in a dark room with headphones.  I have some decent studio headphones back from my recording days and I LOVE great soundtracks and sound design.  The sound effects on this were surprisingly good – borderline amazing (and perhaps borderline over-the-top in places).  Simple things like the sound of bootsteps in snow or the knocking of morse code on a wall to the sound of….well….what vampires do.  The soundtrack was perfect - very subtle and never doing the job of telling the story for it.

Conclusion:
I wish I could say a lot more about this, but doing so would get us into spoiler territory.  This renewed my faith that the horror genre can produce a great film from time to time.   Thanks to BlueVoid for the assignment and thanks again to everyone on the filmspotting forums that makes this a fun place to be and a welcoming place for people's reviews like the one I've posted here today.  As far as recommending this to others, there is definitely some voilence in this as you might expect but it's done...um....pretty tastefully, not intended to make you squirm in your seats or shock you.  There are a few scenes that I can see being criticized as prepubescent sexuality - and taken out of context it's hard to argue that criticism.   One in particular is really completely unnecessary and it's been DONE so many times I'm surprised the film went there.  Those who have seen the film probably know exactly which scene I'm refering to.  I'm guilt ridden for having freeze framed on that. :P

More screenshots:






« Last Edit: September 20, 2009, 07:39:31 PM by ferris »
"And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs" - Exodus 8:2 KJV
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LeosAxe

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Re: September MDC Writeups - Best or Favorite Cinematography
« Reply #67 on: September 20, 2009, 07:13:16 PM »
Let the Right One In is one of those movies I consider truly special.

Bill Thompson

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Re: September MDC Writeups - Best or Favorite Cinematography
« Reply #68 on: September 20, 2009, 07:54:01 PM »
Which scene are you referring to as unnecessary, is it the naked scene? Because if it is I thought it was actually necessary, but not for sexual reasons.

Also, what are your actual thoughts on the ending. I think it's wonderfully ambiguous, either the beginning of a relationship on an even level or his descent into being her new handler, I'd be interested in hearing your take on it.

Melvil

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Re: September MDC Writeups - Best or Favorite Cinematography
« Reply #69 on: September 20, 2009, 09:36:17 PM »
Great writeup, ferris. I haven't gotten around to revisiting LtROI, but I loved it when I saw it. Awesome that you liked it as much as you did.