2009 book-keeping

As usual, a list that represents moments which were important to me this year, as marked by the movies I've seen during those times. It also includes traumatic moments- discoveries/rediscoveries, inspirations in form and in spirit-

The Long Day Closes (Terrence Davies, 1992)
Hélas Pour Moi (Jean-Luc Godard, 1993)
Beyond the Forest (King Vidor, 1949)
To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944)
Bird (Clint Eastwood, 1988)
Pola X (Leos Carax, 1999) + The Lovers on the Bridge (Leos Carax, 1991)
Paisan (Roberto Rossellini, 1946)
In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerín, 2007)
The Inner Scar (Philippe Garrel, 1972)
À Nos Amours (Maurice Pialat, 1983)
The Rink (Charles Chaplin, 1916)
J'Entends Plus La Guitare (Philippe Garrel, 1991) + The Frontier of Dawn (Philippe Garrel, 2008)
Femme Fatale (Brian DePalma, 2002)
Out 1: Spectre (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, 2008)
Shirin (Abbas Kiarostami, 2008)
The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)
The Terrorizers (Edward Yang, 1986)
There Was a Father (Yasujiro Ozu, 1942)
Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard, 2004)
Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
Two Lovers (James Gray, 2008)
Orphée (Jean Cocteau, 1950)
Ali (Michael Mann, 2001)
La Réligieuse (Jacques Rivette, 1966)
Sombre (Philippe Grandrieux, 1998)
L'Amour Fou (Jacques Rivette, 1969)
The Yards (James Gray, 2000) + Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
The Dead (John Huston, 1987)
Battle in Heaven (Carlos Reygadas, 2005)
The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, 2003)
Buffalo '66 (Vincent Gallo, 1998)
Last Days (Gus Van Sant, 2005) + Emergency Kisses (Philippe Garrel, 1989)
A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926)
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (José Mojica Marins, 1964) + This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse (José Mojica Marins, 1967)
Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982)
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Elio Petri, 1970)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928)
Vincere (Marco Bellocchio, 2009)
Ne Change Rien (Pedro Costa, 2009) + Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006)
Sicilia! (Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 1997) + Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (Pedro Costa, 2001)
M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)
Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
The Sex Garage (Fred Halsted, 1972) + L.A. Plays Itself (Fred Halsted, 1972)
The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara, 1992)

Always a moral vision; no separation between ethics and aesthetics, the personal and the political.

Notes from a character

Chris Yeo Siew Hua turned me into a character in his debut feature In the House of Straw, so I feel it is my right to speak a little about the film.

First of all, I did not go to the audition. I saw my image (or my character's image) being taken from me (or my character) and given a life of its own. It is a peculiar form of heautoscopy, seeing one's own image on the screen. If that's not bad enough, Chris has made my character (or me) see his (or my) own image at a distance, 'performing' against his (my?) will.

But performance would always be central to a story about myths and archetypes. After all, our lives are live 'performances' of mythic structures already established long before we were born. The film poses a question about performance in relation to archetype by declaring, in an opening monologue, that we are about to see the story of the three little pigs. Then it attempts to bring in the cinematic medium as an answer to that question - how, by photographing what is essentially reality (or a representation of it, like the Eucharist actually transforming into the actual body and blood of Christ, transcending space and time), our 'real world' creates a parallel to these archetypes.

Of course, the film also knows that this creates its own set of problems. The amount of manipulation in this photographic reality (montage), for example, establishes this as a reality that only runs parallel to our own. The film acknowledges this by having me (or my character) question, in voiceover, the veracity of the reality in which I (or my character) dwell in. Manipulation becomes centerfold in this question, in this case, especially, when it comes down to time. My character is unable to turn back the minutes and seconds that the film has already run, even if he rewinds the tape - 'his actions would be in reverse but he would still be going forward in time.' This brings in a relation to the law of entropy (or the arrow of time) that always destroys and undoes whatever manipulation cinema might have (on its characters and its audience). Could we, at this point, already begin to see the problem of free will coming into play? Could we even say that this film is deeply Catholic?

The film attempts to answer these questions by having the whole mechanism break down, of course. My character comes to realize that everything is unchangeable, that even after we move away from childhood and play different roles, we are doomed to repeat the same archetypes over and over. His only answer to this is death, of course. He chooses to die (which in fact, poses another problem for free will), but only to return (a resurrection) to bring down the entire mechanism with him. In the midst of all these illusions, and illusions amidst illusions, there is the savant that knows the truth (my character's sister) - but isn't the audience the savant too? Hasn't the audience been a witness to the struggle between myth and reality, truth and lies? Maybe the conclusion to this is that the mechanism (cinema/myths) cannot survive; in fact it does at one point seem as if the film is deconstructing cinema so as to eventually reach that point. But the fact is that the mechanism has survived. It has survived in us, obviously. We are the living embodiments of myths and archetypes, and...cinema! Why else does my character's sister turn towards the camera at the end? It's a camaraderie between her and us; we too are characters.

More info on In the House of Straw

Thank you Lung Chieh for arguing.

On Tarkovsky's Mirror