MOVIE DIARY 2023: WE'LL SHOOT THE SCENE WHEN YOU FIND A CAT THAT CAN ACT!

I’ve got a real treat for you today! We’re gonna get down with some real-ass CINEMA here because I spent my week with The Criterion Collection (ever heard of it?). Literally everyone of these movies has a French person involved so you know it’s classy and important. PLUS: My ol’ pal, renowned cartoonist and exciting game developer, Meredith Gran is making her return to MOVIE DIARY! I’m super excited to have her back and talking about one of my favorite subjects, movies you watch on a plane.

Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) - dir. George Miller
SPECIAL GUEST WRITER: MEREDITH GRAN

Much (in my imagination) has been written about watching movies on planes. There is a sense, those imaginary writers claim, that your selection is fickle - easily changed, frequently interrupted, carelessly reformatted - and therefore less of a commitment than usual. This dovetails with the terrifying awe of your circumstances: the tube promises to deliver you safely, and you're waiting for that, while your senses fix upon (for all we know) the last film you'll ever see. By this arrangement, the plane movie manages to hold you captive. But does it deserve you?

Three Thousand Years Of Longing is one of those movies with a streaming-ass name that nobody saw or talked about in 2022, that is available to watch on planes, that I gave about 80-20 odds of being either a snooze or an all-out hatefest for me and my husband, who chose to watch it too. Due to our hardware, the only way we could watch together was to sync the audio on two separate streams while sharing a single screen. It was cartoonishly annoying, in the way any airplane activity that seems marginally fun turns out to be. Between all this and traveling with a 4-year-old, it seemed impossible we'd actually give ourselves over to the film. But as Tilda Swinton's Alithea and Idris Elba's Djinn would soon remind us, the world is full of wonderful and highly unlikely encounters that will come to us if we're willing to accept their reality, and sometimes even if we're not.

The movie seems deceptively small and tidy. Alithea, a pragmatic scholar of myth, unwittingly releases a Djinn from a magic lamp. Standard genie rules apply. But Alithea knows every kind of story, and the Djinn knows every kind of human, and this forms the basis of a stalemate where Alithea refuses to wish. Their ensuing conversation in a hotel room makes up most of the film. It's only after the Djinn recounts his entire centuries-long tale of loss and desire (folks, the title delivers!) that Alithea not only trusts the Djinn, but admits to any desire of her own.

The film does not work hard to disguise its universal truth. Between each mistress, whose wishes he can never quite fulfill despite offering too much, the Djinn is left in darkness, pondering the details of What Went Wrong and from which corner of the cosmos to draw his vanishing faith. As in any good myth, the supernatural length and depth of his suffering can be recognized as human, and uniquely so. It's Alithea the mortal who is most resistant to unpacking past lives (she literally keeps them in boxes in the basement) and has never spoken her disenchanted dreams out loud. When she finally does, it's not because she's heard an impressively wild story, but because she sees the Djinn is offering himself generously - more generously than he can afford - and that there is transcendence in accepting such an offer. And look, we ALL wanted to see the woman fuck the genie, but did I or the many people in my mind expect to buy into it so completely? These are beautifully realized characters in a world like our own, where love is impossible and miraculous. It's the kind of storytelling that feels eternal, like it's made from the stuff of the ages, both familiar and new.

I'm painting in broad strokes here, skipping over the Djinn's visually splendid illustrations of Biblical kingdoms, war and intrigue in the Ottoman empire, and Turkey at the dawn of the scientific age. And all of this deserves praise — George Miller knows how to direct the shit out of some visuals — but to me it's all just an ornate vehicle for the ideas: powerful ideas about what it means to live and share our lives. They're the sort of human ideas I find myself begging filmmakers to bring to their work. They're ideas that appear to be vanishing, like the magic of mythological days. In my fatigue, I abandon the search. So when a movie struggles through inflight servers and terrible presentation to give its audience what it truly desires, what can one do but fall prostrate in wonder?

And yes, we watched it again at home and it still rips. Set love free and it will return, as the story goes.

Meredith Gran is a cartoonist, animator and game developer who lives in Philadelphia, PA. She is currently planning her son's 5th birthday party.
http://www.octopuspie.com | http://www.perfect-tides.com

Amateur (1994) - dir. Hal Hartley

A real fun, weird movie for real freaks! I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it to form a satisfying post about it, but I had such a good time watching this bizarre movie. Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) is a former nun and self-described nymphomaniac (though she’s never had sex) who now spends her time in a diner writing erotic stories for a porno magazine. She meets Thomas (Martin Donovan) after he stumbles into the diner, bleeding and unable to remember who he is. The two are thrown into the mystery of figuring out who Thomas is, and as they uncover more clues, they begin to discover that Thomas is an awful, dangerous man.

Amateur is a movie that deals in sex and violence, but there’s also a tenderness to it. The surprising relationship that develops between Isabelle and Thomas is as harrowing as it is weirdly romantic. Isabelle is drawn to Thomas initially because he’s injured and needs help (maybe a vestigial feeling of her former life as a nun), but as the two learn more awful details about what a monster Thomas was pre-amnesia forcing them to go on the run from two dangerous hitmen, Isabelle doesn’t shy away and she becomes even more drawn to him.

It’s a fun premise for a noir, but Amateur is so much stranger than any of that. Everyone’s putting out these wonderful, idiosyncratic performances, and there are these great asides with these charming and strange side characters. My favorite was Isabelle’s editor at the porno magazine lamenting his career path and talking about how his real ambition was to get into defamatory journalism. I also loved officer Melville, the cop assigned to amnesiac cases who cares so much, she’s brought to tears every time she questions an amnesiac. The world of Amateur is so perverse and aggressive. Everyone in this movie seems like they’re having the weirdest day of their lives and they’ve all got something sincere and confrontational to say about it. There’s this earnestness that everyone has, not in an “aw-shucks-there’s-kindness-in-everyone-Ted Lasso” kind of way, but more in that everyone seems unafraid to say what they’re feeling, even if what they’re feeling is really fucked up and conniving and rude (it usually is).

Breathless (1960) - dir. Jean-Luc Godard

There’s plenty of great and smart writing about Breathless and this is absolutely not that. This is MOVIE DIARY 2023, we’re all about vibes here babyyyy… which is just a way for me to say I didn’t really like this movie and I’m sorry if that makes me stupid, please don’t gatekeep me.

I guess my generous read on Breathless is that the exhausting nihilism is probably the point of it, but at the end of the day, it still makes me feel how every nihilist work makes me feel, which is exhausted. At least Godard is upfront with what this movie is. It starts with our main guy Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) telling us, “After all, I’m an asshole,” and then we get an entire movie of him being an asshole. Michel steals cars, kills a cop, makes phone calls to people who owe him money, but mostly he spends his time pestering Patricia (Jean Seberg) to fuck him again and run away to Rome with him. Patricia is on her own journey, an American woman living in Paris, learning to speak passable French as she pursues a career in journalism. She wants to be independent, and she wants to never have to depend on a man, but unfortunately she still can’t shake her feelings for archetypal fuckboy Michel.

Obviously a very influential movie and a kind of turning point for cinema, but I couldn’t help but wonder if my not liking this movie was because I was coming to it too late in the game. Has the passage of time dulled the impact of Godard’s revolutionary jump cuts in Breathless? When I think about this movie I think about how I’ve been exposed to all this media that, looking back on it now, was just iterating on the style and technique of an original such as Breathless, and maybe because of that the original doesn’t seem as exciting or important to me as I’d been led to believe it should. But then I think about something like Citizen Kane (1941), which was another movie I’d come to much later, and which also had such wide-ranging influence on how movies were made, but which still absolutely slaps. So, I don’t know, I’m not really sure where I’m going with this, I just think it’s interesting how your mileage can vary with “important” movies. I admire this movie’s style and it certainly has an attitude about it, but mostly what I didn’t like is Michel, and we have to spend an entire movie with this loser.

So much of what Michel is up to in this movie could read as cool, but it’s all just surface. Michel idolizes Humphrey Bogart, and he tries to model his whole vibe on him. He’s got a rumpled suit, he’s constantly smoking cigarettes, and he carries himself with what he’s probably hoping is something like the casual cool of classic Bogey, but mostly it just looks like he’s a capricious scrub in a too-big suit. Beyond his Bogey fascination, Michel seems to be pure instinct and id. He goes where he wants, he doesn’t hesitate to use people or push them into doing what he wants, and when he can’t get what he wants or if someone’s in his way he’s quick to use violence. He seems to think of himself as suave, put-upon, the smartest person in the room, but in truth he’s ruled by his emotions and he’s a sloppy criminal, inevitably leaving a trail of evidence and witnesses that point back to him wherever he goes. Michel’s going to get found out, and once he sees the end coming for him he resigns himself to it as a way to position himself above the inevitable and leave himself blameless, telling himself, “Sure I’m going to get caught, but it’s because Patricia betrayed me, that’s what women do, this is my own fault for loving a woman, actually prison would be good for me, none of this matters anyway, I like prison, etc.” I think that this positioning is a bit of sour grapes, but I do also think that Michel really believes that none of it matters anyway. If we’ve learned one thing watching Michel it’s that Michel doesn’t really care about what happens to him and even less about what happens to others. He says it’s because he’s disgusted by the world, but he’s so self involved that it seems that the only real person to him is himself, so really he’s just disgusted by himself. “Makes me want to puke.”

Day For Night (1973) - dir. François Truffaut

It’s a movie about making movies! Usually a movie about making a movie can tend to go in a self-aware, metatextual direction, or there’s this sort of jadedness to it, but Day For Night does it differently. This is a movie that features something I always love to see: people who are good at their jobs. I like a good self-aware critique of an industry as much as the next guy, but Day For Night is more about the love of the craft and the dignity of working to do a job well done. Truffaut’s big accomplishment here is somehow making it not feel phony or corny, despite a lot of the movie featuring quite a few scenes with actors doing that thing we’re they’re playing at being self-deprecating, but really it’s a roundabout way of self-aggrandizement. You know, that whole “We’re all so insecure and emotionally needy, but really that’s what makes us so special and our profession so meaningful” thing that actors do when you just let them ramble on about why they got into acting. Truffaut spares our eyes from completely rolling into the back of our heads by thankfully refraining from putting the focus solely on the actors. We get to spend time with everyone on the crew. The director (played by Truffaut himself), the producer, the prop master, the make up artist, the script supervisor, the photographer — they all have their own problems and none of them are dealing with them very well, but the work on the movie keeps them going and brings them together.

There’s a scene where Alphonse, a temperamental, overly sensitive, and emotionally stunted young actor finally emerges from his hotel room after having just been dumped by his girlfriend (he got her a job on the movie so that they could be together but she leaves him for the stuntman). He steps out into the hall as the crew passes by and dramatically asks if anyone can lend him money for a whorehouse. It’s childish attention-seeking, but Ferrand, the director, knows actors and he knows how to talk to Alphonse. He tells him:

Come on, Alphonse. Go back to your room, re-read the script, learn your lines, then try to sleep. Tomorrow we work. That's what matters. Don't be a fool. You're a very good actor. No one's private life runs smoothly. That only happens in the movies. No traffic jams, no dead periods. Movies go along like trains in the night. And people like you and me are only happy in our work. I'm counting on you.

It’s maybe just a little manipulative, but it also shows Ferrand’s understanding and compassion for everyone who is working with him on the movie. Of course egos will flare and there will be arguments and hurt feelings, but that’s just how life is. As turbulent as their lives may get, they are the fortunate types of people who can find solace in their work, in bound together by making art that transcends all this. They all need each other. There’s a refreshing sense of joy in this movie, a real love for the entirety of the filmmaking process coming through as we see these people throw themselves into the work of making this film. They’re each dealing with relationship problems, family problems, mental health problems, and they obviously don’t know how to fix them, but what they do know is how to make a movie. It might look like the problems of the film are only adding to the pressure of their personal problems, but these people relish being able to throw themselves at these filmmaking problems. It’s nice to see that this movie is as much about the hard work, the sweat, the labor, the problem-solving, as it is about the aqueous, touchy-feely vibes of being a self-described outcast who’s found their niche.

Ok that’s all for this week! Hope you liked all this talk about serious CINEMA. We’re gonna close out Q1 of MOVIE DIARY 2023 next week, with something fun, so I’ll see you then! Make sure to join the MOVIE DIARY 2023 Discord for more MOVIE DIARY 2023 fun, and to connect with your peers!

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