I recently received an invitation from UniFrance and The Rubin Museum of Art to introduce a special screening of Michael Haneke's Caché tomorrow, Friday, June 22nd at 9:30pm. The screening is free (there is a $7 drink minimum) and is held at the museum, located at 150 West 17th Street (near 7th Ave), in Manhattan. I am honored to be asked and hope you will join me for the film.

Interestingly, the film is being shown as part of the museum's The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama exhibition; Artist (and fellow Michigander) Ken Aptekar, whose painting I Saw the Figure Five in Gold is included in the exhibition, chose the film for the museum's 'Artists' Choice' film series because of his interest in the “distorting effects of geopolitical events on the lives of individuals years later.” (Sounds perfectly sensible to me.) Ken will be on hand to offer his thoughts on the film, and I am putting my notes together as well; I plan on honoring the director's refusal to offer interpretation of his films and instead, I'll try to contextualize the film in terms of Haneke's works and offer some thoughts about how Caché might fit into the themes of the exhibition (or challenge them). We plan on talking about 10-15 minutes, and then its on with the show. If you haven't seen the movie, I hope you'll try to drop by and say hello. The details:

Note: the 'well-read blog' bit was the museum's, not mine. *Grin*

UPDATE: It looks as though Arnaud Desplechin's latest film, Un Conte De Noël (Tale Of Christmas), is set in Northern France and is a family drama in a similar vein of La vie des morts... an in depth article by Pierre Murat in Telerama.fr about the film production (roughly, and I mean roughly, translated by Google) can be found here. The highlights:

"After the triumph of Kings and queen, two years ago, Arnaud Desplechin turns, at this beginning of spring, in these landscapes of the North which he knows well, his new film, entitled A tale of Christmas. A fresco as he likes them, sinuous, tormented, film-multi-stage mixing and buffoonery and rage. A family saga, in fact, which enabled him to join together, once again, the family which he slowly constituted with his preceding films: The Sentinel, How I got into an argument…, Kings and queen. One finds the familiar (Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Devos, Jean-Paul Roussillon), the new (Melvil Poupaud, Laurent Capelluto) and the almost accessory ones, too briefly met (Anne Consigny, Chiara Mastroianni, Hyppolite Girardot). With, at their head, the French actress that he admires more and with which he had already offered, in Kings and queen, a second role, splendid and extravagant: Catherine Deneuve."

Arnaud Desplechin and Emmanuelle Devos on the set of Un Conte De Noël(Photo: Why Not Productions Jean-Claude Lother)

"To define the young woman, he wrote in the synopsis: 'A very young and serious face: Diane Keaton in Interiors of Woody Allen.' Desplechin proceeds often thus, by cinematographic references: 'To remember the fury, the magic of Scorsese in New York Stories”, he noted concerning the role of the cousin-painter, friend and traitor. And to help Melvil Poupaud to interpret Ivan, the eternally optimistic member of the family... (he) obstinately advised to him to take as a starting point the the character whom Jean Renoir in The Rules of the Game interpreted. The Master took off his hat in front of his actors after each take; if Desplechin does not make it, it is right that he does not have a hat. But his enthusiasm is the same one. And his gratitude. Provided with an ashtray that an assistant empties as quickly as it fills, he observes them, squatted, the eye always with the actors. And if he does not say “'Impressing, impressing! ', like Renoir, he exclaims: “Ah, super beautiful, this plan! ” or even: “Too class! ”, before turning over, smiling, towards his old accomplice, the chief operator Eric Gautier."

I really cannot wait to see it.

From the Why Not Productions website, the first image from Arnaud Desplechin's Un Conte De Noël (Tale Of Christmas), starring long-time Desplechin collaborator Mathieu Amalric and the luminous Catherine Deneuve. The cast includes Emmanuelle Devos, Chiara Mastroiani, Melvil Poupaud and Jean-Paul Roussillon and the film was written by My Sex Life... collaborator and Poison Friends Writer/Director Emmanuel Bourdieu. I can't wait for 2008!

Amalric and Deneuve in Un Conte De Noël

My 2005 interview with Desplechin is here, for those interested.

UPDATE: The new Claire Denis film, White Material is shown as well...

Thanks to Pascale H. (as always) for the heads up...

On Thursday morning, I woke up nice and early and made the drive from Brooklyn to Silver Spring, MD to spend a few days taking in the 2007 SilverDocs International Documentary Conference. I was immediately impressed with the organization of the festival; A walk down the block to pick up my badge, my tickets were in perfect order, and the volunteers were happy to point me in the right direction. Silver Spring itself was a bit of a surprise; My memory of the area was based on living in DC from 1995-97, and the downtown area has gone from a traditional suburban environment to what one fellow festival-goer described as a "terrarium," an environment populated by chain stores and chain restaurants, manufactured public spaces, and a near-complete absence of small, locally owned businesses. Of course, the festival found plenty of fun and funky places nearby to house all of the merriment (The Quarry House and its complimentary tater tots and the must-be-seen-to-be-believed Moose Lodge were highlights), but the jewel in this newly-polished crown is the AFI Silver Theater, a wonderful facility with world-class projection and sound that was filled to capacity the entire weekend. I met up with my programming partner Holly Herrick and got down to the business of taking in films.

The AFI Silver

First up, Esther Robinson's A Walk Into The Sea, the story of her uncle and Warhol Factory fixture Danny Williams and his unsolved disappearance in the 1960's. The film was hauntingly beautiful, featuring Robinson's stunning use of her uncle's luminous 16mm footage (shot on Warhol's Bolex) and a fabulous score by Robinson's husband and collaborator T. Griffin. There have been several 'corrective' documentaries in recent years that have re-examined the glamor of the Factory in light of the human toll that was taken by the cult of personality surrounding Warhol himself and what has continually emerged is a portrait of Warhol befitting his nickname; 'Drella, an amalgamation of Dracula and Cinderella, a creature who can suck you dry, make your dreams come true and let you live forever. But at what cost? The pain inflicted on those who knew and worked with Warhol comes into sharp focus with each new film, and in A Walk Into The Sea, the suffering of Danny Williams' mother (Robinson's grandmother) ius expressed in her eternal misgivings about the Factory and Warhol's process; She is so desperate to reclaim her son from the shadows of Warhol's monumental contribution to art, she inspires retrospection and sadness at a life that might have been if only a more human, gentle system been in place. It made me wonder about the contradictory nature of Warhol's conception of artistic freedom; All of the work and the impersonal structure of a manufacturing corporation (with Warhol as founder and CEO) and none of the hard-won responsibility required by workers of these institutions. Add drugs into the mix, and Warhol's Factory becomes a nightmarish vision of work; Colored lights, noisy music, film and paint replace the soot and sweat of unregulated industrial labor. The outcome for the workers? Not as different as you might think. That the Factory produced beautiful, eternal objects does raise the question of the validity of Warhol's process and tactics, but as the sad smile on Danny Williams' face in the film perfectly highlights, their value may never replace the the human cost in the eyes of many.

Next was Mary Lambert's 14 Women, an engaging (and surprisingly apolitical) look at the 14 women who made up the United States Senate in 2005 (the number is now 16, as the film makes clear in its coda). Lambert juxtaposes the can-do girl power of interviews with pre-teen girls with 'day-in-the-life' behind the scenes footage of the Senators and the familial routines which, the movie makes clear, are just like those of every other professional wife and mother. And while there is a great deal of collegiality among the women (the Democrats and Republicans often gather for tea, conversation and caucusing), there is also political work to be done, including campaigning, fund raising, committee work and the actual act of legislating (not to mention entertaining lobbyists, guests and the eternal parade of children on school trips). Lambert has tremendous access to the Senators (she's the sister of Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln) and the movie feels light and engaging, the charming equivalent of a civics lesson meant to inspire young women to continue the fight for female representation in government. Of course, not every portrait is the same (Hillary Clinton seems to be keeping the filmmaker at arm's length and Kay Bailey Hutchinson is shown at the Texas Republican Convention spouting all sorts of right-wing nonsense with all the personality of a lettuce), but the movie is winning and a real charmer, especially in front of the politically savvy audience in the DC area.

The Seat Of Power: Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas) address the crowd at the 14 Women party at Ceviche on Thursday night.

After some party hopping, it was off to bed and up again on Friday. Some screenings here and some meetings there, and I got back to the theater in time to catch Alex Gibney's Taxi To The Darkside , which was, like many of the films that have recently tracked the incompetence and sophistry of the Cheney Bush Administration's war In Iraq, was a tremendously frustrating experience. I absolutely believe in the power of cinema to transform lives, and particularly in the power of documentary films to uncover truths not otherwise seen, but the laundry list of abuses of power and the criminal dismissal of the Geneva Conventions by bureaucrats writing sterile "white paper" justifications of the untouchable master's wishes, well, I found the film neither surprising or all that informative. Instead, it is absolutely infuriating; Not as a work of art (it is a brilliant and amazingly cinematic summation of the crimes being committed in our name), but as a record of silence on behalf of the American people. The film tracks the case involving the murder of a young Afghani Taxi driver by US Forces, and follows the spiraling vacuum of common sense, leadership and standards of freedom and decency all the way through to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. I asked Gibney, in light of the disgusting 'ticking time bomb scenario' unfurled by Brit Hume at the recent Republican Presidential Debate, why there was little sense of outrage in America, and he had no insights into the void either.

Up early on Saturday for a screening of Forever, Heddy Honigmann's brilliantly witty and humane portrait of the Pére-Lachaise cemetery and the people who visit the graves of its most famous inhabitants. There are meditative moments early on as Honingmann's camera explores the surfaces of the grave markers and statuary that make up this famous burial ground, but once she meets a young woman at the gave of Frederic Chopin and follows her home, the film becomes less about the Pére-Lachaise and more about the enduring power of art to transform lives and inspire devotion. Nowhere was this more evident than Honigmann's third stop at the grave of Marcel Proust, where she meets an illustrator whose life-long relationship with À la recherche du temps perdu inspires him to create a comic book adaptation of Proust's beloved novel. There are also loving portraits of the denizens of the Pére-Lachaise who seem to have adopted the graves of their favorite artists and who maintain them with an endless stream of 1.5-liter water bottles and flowers, and a must-see conversation with a young embalmer who talks of his inspiration at both the grave of Modigliani and while working on the corpse of a young woman. Honingmann's humanism is the key to her overwhelming success here, and the film was certainly one of my favorite at the festival.

Amy King asked me to pinch-hit on the Film Festival Programmers Panel, which was an enjoyable conversation with my colleagues that ran out of time before we could get to a Q&A (cést la vie). We'll see if the podcast makes it on the website... That evening, I took in my final screening of the fest; Albert Maysles, Antonio Ferrera and Matthew Prinzing's look at Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Central Park installation The Gates. Frankly, I adored the movie, despite the feeling that it was a little slight and not really loving The Gates when they were up. But individual taste is irrelevant and that is the point; An absolute warts-and-all love letter to New York City, The Gates shows the people of New York City as an unclassifiable community of diverse people that not only take their city seriously, but are willing to open their hearts to collective experience. For all of its flowing fabric, what The Gates really brought to New York City was a chance to come together in Central Park, a place that everyone loves, and be New Yorkers together. The movie itself follows Christo and Jeanne-Claude's 1979 attempt to get the City to permit the project (it failed under the weight of ridiculous arguments against 'defacing the perfection of the park') through to the last days of the installation itself, and the second half of the movie, when Christo and Jeanne-Claude step aside and The Gates project is in full swing, reminded me of a late-1970's/early 1980's Woody Allen film, when you simply fall in love with New York City is all of its rich splendor (and the wonderful jazzy soundtrack for the film, although very un-Maysles like, certainly contributes to the Woody Allen feel). Ultimately, though, what The Gates represented was a triumph of large-hearted humanism and art over not only the conservative objections of literal-minded critics, but the post-9/11 malaise that still materializes now and again here in New York. And frankly, who doesn't like to see art save the day?

I am issuing a major SPOILER alert: If you did not see The Sopranos finale, are a Tivo user, a Netflix-er who is behind on the series or simply do not want to know what happened, please stop reading now. It's only going to be problematic from here...

In an episode that is sure to live in television infamy, David Chase, creator of The Sopranos delivered tonight what I consider to be one of the great endings of a television series ever, with the series finale Made In America. It is the perfect title; America is going to HATE this ending, I can feel it in my bones. I don't want to go into too much detail about the machinations of the plot, as I think the story lines all paid off, but more into the wonderfully cynical and deeply personal meaning of the episode's final moments. Coming into the finale, and after eating a giant plate of spaghetti and meatballs with friends in Brooklyn, everyone's biggest question was, as it was in every episode prior, 'Who is going to get whacked?' Over the course of its many seasons, the murderous machinations of the New Jersey mafia allowed the fans of the show to take delight and voyeuristic pleasure in the assassinations, murder, beatings, etc. In the final moments of Made In America, Chase delivers on the perversity of that voyeurism with a bold, wondrous sequence. Here are the echoes of a dozen other murders, moments for which we have been so deeply conditioned by this series that the pay-off, when it finally arrives, feels both earned and unprecedented; A profound intimacy, as close to Tony Soprano's emotional point of view as anything in series has ever delivered before.

It takes us a moment to get there; Paulie, seemingly the only member of Tony's crew, is once again coerced by Tony into taking a job as a front man on the construction job, a role that has seen its share of deaths. Ever the politically savvy guy (and not without his characteristic protestations),yet unable to imagine himself without the context of his mob work, Paulie slides back into his role only after objecting in principle to it. Things stay the same, things remain. The war with New York resolved (brilliantly), Carmella and the family move back into the Soprano home. AJ, after a great season of angst-ridden protest against everything his upbringing stands for, gets funded to work on a film project and immediately abandons his 'principles'; A perfect encapsulation of the national malaise. Keep your ideals, but always compromise to benefit yourself. Carmela tells Tony to meet the family at a small Italian restaurant, and Tony agrees. But first, a stop; Junior Soprano. Tony's senile uncle is shown in the squalor of a state-run institution, bereft of the memory of his hidden stash of money or his once-dominant role in organized crime. Nothing is left. Things change. We all fade away.

A Little Nod To A Prairie Home Companion?: David Chase's The Sopranos Comes To An End

Tony is the first to arrive at dinner, and he browses the tableside juke box in the booth; He scrolls to find Don't Stop Belivin' by Journey*. Tony pops in a quarter and the song begins. Let me say that this choice in songs was brilliant; an upbeat classic with double meanings galore when heightened by the mounting tension in this scene. 5 minutes left in the show, America's clock is ticking. A man in a black 'USA' baseball cap (of course) scrolls the large juke box near the door. The frame gets tighter, Tony only in close-up now. What will happen? Carmella arrives and slides in the booth across from Tony. Didn't Bobby's killers wear black baseball hats? Uh-oh. AJ arrives at the exact moment another man walks in. The man looks threatening. He sits at the counter and drinks coffee. AJ slides into the booth. Earlier, another shot of the man in the black hat, stirring his coffee; Everyone paralleled by juke boxes and coffee cups. Tony takes notice of the room. Meadow struggles to parallel park. Will her delay spare her? Is Tony going to get it? The second man with the coffee heads to the bathroom as the camera tracks him. Michael Corleone in The Godfather! Is the whole family done for? Meadow approaches from outside. Two African American men at the juke box now. Meadow crosses the street, heads to the door, we cut to Tony's face. The bell on the door rings. Tony looks up.

Don't Stop...

Black.

In my opinion, this scene, which is constructed on the remains of season after season's worth of dread and conditioning, is absolute perfection and the complete illustration of how Tony Soprano will spend the rest of his life (no matter how long it is); pure anxiety, absolute tension and fear made manifest. Everything Tony has pushed down inside himself, every deep and dangerous exhale through his nostrils, it's here. This is what it's like to be Tony Soprano, but this is also us. His family, his love for them pressed tightly against the reality that every single anonymous person that walks through the door may bring The End. A stranger drinking coffee. The man at the juke box. You'll never know. This is purgatory, the place without resolution, the in-between place where Tony will always reside. Where he has always lived. This is the American condition like it has never been illustrated before. It is an unfinished life, rife with the sense that at any moment, the chickens will either come home to roost or things will simply continue on without a single whiff of equilibrium. What was delivered? What justice was served? What closure did we earn? Step on the subway in a post-9/11 world and it's in the back of your mind. The bell rings. We step through airport security and it's there. Everything is danger, everything is benign. Life goes on. Things remain. Things fade away. It's all pressed inside. No answer. Danger lurks; everything is terror, everything is the end. Nothing is happening. Everything is happening around us. What can we do? Join the Army? Become a lawyer for the poor? Steal and kill? Make shallow entertainment and drive flashy cars? We're helpless. We push it down. Who can we trust? The family is in jeopardy. How will it end? There is no divine justice. Life carries on. How can I sleep at night? Life ends. We love our family. Life is mundane. There is happiness. The bell rings. Life continues.

Don't stop...
Black.

America wants closure! David Chase gave us a mirror. Bravo.

*Fact: As a child, I always played Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin' by Journey at the tableside juke box at the old Ruggeros Italian restaurant in Flint, MI (what can I say? I liked the Na-Na Na Na Na Na's). This was an eerie moment for me!

In the spirit of The New Yorker Magazine Summer Movies essay series, I present my own contribution to this wonderful exercise....

Summer Movies
Paris, Texas

Like most teenage summers, the summer of 1985 was full of anticipation. It was the summer before I began High School, fraught with all the attendant anxiety of what that leap would mean. I was a smart and confident fourteen year-old kid with a big mouth, uncomfortable in my own skin but with a brash sense of humor that I used to forge a barrier between myself and the outside world. Instead of physical confrontation, I courted verbal conflict like a knight errant, happily jumping into the fray of someone else’s argument to pontificate about my atheism, left-wing political views, tastes in music, whatever. At the time, I had no idea how a foolish 14 year-old boy looked while spouting off what he’d read in books or come to understand through his minimal life experience, but this was the joy of that age; The fascistic certainty of a high contrast world where things operated as pure dialectics. This or That. True or False. Period and end of.

I think my certainty and interest in the limited grown-up things I had experienced and enjoyed (jazz, punk rock/’college rock’, reading) lent me an air of maturity, or maybe there was something so convincing about my self-confidence that adults were as certain of me as I was myself (there is a lesson in there somewhere), but my mom and step-dad entrusted me with a great deal of responsibility that summer; I was frequently left in charge of my 11 year-old brother Chris as my parents pursued their passion for Duplicate Bridge tournaments.* While they traveled the country (and Canada) playing cards on the weekends, I would whip up baloney sandwich lunches, down insane amounts of Diet soda (a habit which I still am fighting to break), and Chris and I would watch movies on the VCR.

Flint, Michigan was pretty much a cinematic wasteland all year long; relatively small multiplexes (Genesee Valley Cinemas, the Showcase West), mall-based theater chains (Small Mall, Eastland Mall), the giant, single-screen Flint Cinema on Dort Highway, and the occasional trip to the Miracle Twin Drive-In (which is still in operation) were the primary choices, and like most towns of Flint’s size, the screens were all taken up by the same movies. When Michigan Video opened its doors just a few blocks from my house (on the corner of Miller Rd. and Ballenger Highway), it instantly became our primary source for entertainment when the parents were away. We rented everything we could get our hands on; Ridiculous horror films (I Spit On Your Grave!, Zombie, Last House On The Left—the more lurid the box, the most desirable the rental) and action movies (Chris was a big fan of Sylvester Stallone), and we’d sit in cushioned chairs only inches from the TV screen, the windows wide open and the muggy Michigan air brushing against us by way of a single oscillating fan.

Late in the summer of 1985, I rented Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas. I had seen the box in the video store and had paid the film no mind at all, but earlier in the summer, a friend’s parents had rented it and had left the box out in the living room. I hadn’t noticed Nastassja Kinski on the box before, but I remembered her instantly from some photos I had seen around the time Polanski’s Tess had come out and then seeing her in the flesh in Paul Schrader's Cat People remake; I am not sure any 14 year-old boy could have resisted her charms, but I certainly wasn’t willing to try. She was amazingly beautiful, eyes and lips that you would never see in Flint in a hundred lifetimes; when I saw her on the box of Paris, Texas, I knew I had to see it. A Friday afternoon in August, and Chris and I rented our usual stack of videos and we watch a couple on Friday night. Saturday rolls around, my brother is off to play with his friends in the neighborhood, and I pop in Paris, Texas.

++

I can only describe Paris, Texas in retrospect; It would have been impossible for me to articulate any realizations about the impact the film had on me at the time. A couple of things I do remember: The vast, empty desert scrunched down to fit my 19” TV was still as powerful a metaphor as I have ever seen. And when Travis (Harry Dean Stanton, in his greatest performance) and Jane finally meet on opposite sides of one-way glass, I started crying. I was deeply embarrassed, red from the shame of it despite being alone on a sunny Saturday afternoon. No 14 year-old boy would admit to crying in a movie and I probably hadn’t cried since Ricky Schroder hugged Jon Voight’s dead body in The Champ**, but that cold piece of glass between Travis and Jane was too much for me. I understand it now; This was LITERALLY the first time I had been confronted by interiority in art. Travis’ journey was everything I knew about my own feelings and could never articulate; whereas I used words to keep people at bay so I could manage my own inner life by my own rules, Travis used silence and physical isolation to much better effect. I connected with his character in a very profound way, having gone through my own parent’s divorce ten-years earlier and now feeling the loneliness of adolescence. The movie wasn’t about me (obviously), but it felt like something I already knew about myself and had never understood. It also gave me my first real taste of the most important feeling I could know; uncertainty.

And then there was Nastassja, older now, made to look world-weary and exhausted. When Travis saw her behind the glass, I was looking with my own eyes, a once inconceivably beautiful woman fallen down to the world of mortals. She was no longer an object or fantasy to me, but suddenly a person, an actress, both concrete and beyond comprehension. I won’t suggest that there was something in my crying that was motivated by my own feelings upon seeing Nastassja Kinski made human, or by the profound confusion that this moment of sexual longing and deep sadness inspired in the 14 year-old me, but at the same time, Nastassja was like a bucket of heartbreak spilled on the floor, and seeing her, untouchable behind the glass, it blew me away. This is love? What were my tears all about? My idea of myself reflected in the saddest heartbreak, the empty desert, the long walk to nowhere, the selective amnesia (and the rejection it implies), the restoration of son to mother? Why did I suddenly (and for many years irrevocably) feel so alone?

Because I was alone. Because watching Paris, Texas on a steamy afternoon in Michigan and discovering yourself is entirely that feeling, articulated in every line on Travis’ face, every empty desert road leading to God knows where. I looked up from the TV screen and there was all of my parents stuff, their things filling the living room; I was something else entirely. That is life, inside of me and around me. I simply hadn’t seen it before. When Travis finally does try to connect, he still can't be seen, he's trapped observing the woman he loved, longing for a different result, a feeling he simply can't have. It was an impossible moment. That was the moment I fell in love with movies.

Longing, Made Flesh: Nastassja Kinski in Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas

It was definitive for me. I still utilize the framework of movie-going to sort out my emotions and feelings, to give myself permission to ask myself questions about my life. It is the singular reason that film is so important to me; movies have become a way of self-examination. The more a movie makes me feel, the closer I get to understanding myself. That may sound like made-up bullshit, but I assure you it is true; I feel more alive in a movie theater than I do almost anywhere else. Paris, Texas was the first time I ever had that feeling, so important to me now, of discovering something inside myself of which I wasn’t conscious. Since I played that movie on my parent’s old VCR, the pursuit of that feeling has consumed me, and movie-going has become an addiction, a quest to constantly discover mirrors on the screen that reflect an unseen self-image back at me, each moment connected to the last time, each moment in anticipation of the next. Has the screen become the glass between the outside world and me? Not at all; I simply harbor certain parts of myself that I can only give over to cinema. The rest? That’s my secret.

*A story in and of itself.
** Any kid who says he saw The Champ in the theater and didn’t cry is lying.