This is it folks.  Your chance to see the most extraordinary new film I’ve seen in the four years of recording The Film Talk:  ENTER THE VOID.

The ‘uncut version’ is playing tonight at midnight at Nuart in Los Angeles.  If you’re within 8 hours driving distance you owe it to yourself to get there and see it – be it – live it!

Our Interview with ENTER THE VOID star Nathaniel Brown

Our Original review of ENTER THE VOID

ENTER THE VOID on our Films of 2010 Show

]]> http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/enter-the-void-nuart-los-angeles/feed/ 0 http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/tron-legacy-true-grit-podcast-review/ http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/tron-legacy-true-grit-podcast-review/#comments Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:14:43 +0000 Jett Loe http://thefilmtalk.com/?p=11340

Here it is – a review of that Apple Store you have to pay to get into, TRON: LEGACY, plus the laugh out loud tragedy of the year TRUE GRIT.  All that and our thoughts on the Films of the Year.

Running time: 54 minutes and 49 seconds – 26mb mp3

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Gareth’s Films of the Year:

DVD’s of The Year:  THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER / BBS Box Set / FANTASIA

Interesting But Not Great: GET HIM TO THE GREEK / SPLICE / KICK-ASS / CYRUS / TOY STORY 3 / KNIGHT AND DAY / THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT / IRON MAN 2 / VINCERE / THE ECLIPSE / MEGAMIND / THE SOCIAL NETWORK / WASTE LAND / THE AMERICAN / SOLITARY MAN / THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES / FISH TANK / EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP / BROOKLYN’S FINEST / RED RIDING TRILOGY / THE GHOST WRITER / THE KING’S SPEECH

Documentaries to Seek Out:  FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE / RAW FAITH / THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS

What to Avoid:  ROBIN HOOD / THE A-TEAM / SALT / PRINCE OF PERSIA / HOT TUB TIME MACHINE / UNSTOPPABLE / EAT PRAY LOVE / CLASH OF THE TITANS / ALICE IN WONDERLAND / THE WOLFMAN / EDGE OF DARKNESS

Just Outside the Top Ten:  BLACK SWAN / NEVER LET ME GO / TRON: LEGACY / WALL STREET 2: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS / MONSTERS / WINTER’S BONE / 127 HOURS / I’M STILL HERE / SEX AND THE CITY 2 / LEAVES OF GRASS / THE OTHER GUYS

Top Ten Films of the Year:  CARLOS / HEREAFTER / THE BOOK OF ELI / LOURDES / AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE / ENTER THE VOID / HOWL / I AM LOVE / INCEPTION / SHUTTER ISLAND

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Jett’s Films of the Year:

No. 5:  THAT EVENING SUN / No. 4: LOURDES / No. 3: NEVER LET ME GO / No. 2: I AM LOVE

and No. 1 – the most extraordinary new film I’ve seen in the four years we’ve been doing The Film Talk:

ENTER THE VOID

(Our Interview with ENTER THE VOID star Nathaniel Brown)

]]> http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/tron-legacy-true-grit-podcast-review/feed/ 6 http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/coming-soon-to-blu-ray-ingmar-bergmans-the-magician/ http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/coming-soon-to-blu-ray-ingmar-bergmans-the-magician/#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:08:50 +0000 Tony Youngblood http://www.thefilmtalk.com/?p=8126 Ingmar Bergman’s 1958 film The Magician (Ansiktet) is one of the director’s lesser known works. Yet for me, it’s Bergman at his absolute best — an illusive, atmospheric, soulful shadow-show on skepticism and spirituality. On October 12th, the film will be released by Criterion on Blu-Ray and dvd for the first time on either format. I first fell in love with the film via an aging vhs copy and later purchased the Criterion edition on laserdisc. If any release would tempt me into rethinking my new dvd-free worldview, it would be this one.

The Magician stars the near-complete stable of Bergman classic actors: Max von Sydow as the impenetrable traveling illusionist; Gunnar Björnstrand as the heartlessly-logical Minister of Health; and Ingrid Thulin, Bengt Ekerot, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson, and Åke Fridell as wayfarers, farmhands, and townsfolk. Sparse on dialogue, the film tells its story through penetrating close ups, painterly black & white cinematography, and the most beautiful shot compositions I have ever seen. Everything is smoke and mirror, shadow, misdirection, and fluttering curtains (inspired perhaps by  Bergman’s childhood fascination with magic lanterns). It is to the testament of the absolute beauty of the film that its message — spiritualism over critical-thinking — works for me even though I am diametrically opposed to it.

Albert Emanuel Vogler — illusionist, seller of bottled cure-alls, and head of a group of traveling gypsies — is detained in a small town by the Minister of Health, Dr. Vergerus, who believes Vogler nothing more than a charlatan. Vergerus seeks to expose the magician as a trickster, to publicly denounce him as a con-artist. Of course, Vogler is a charlatan (the John Edward of the middle ages), but that doesn’t stop us from rooting for him as he finds ways to outwit the minister. Skeptics have always gotten a bad wrap in movies –  arrogant, stuffy, inflexible, unimaginative blowhards. Vergerus is no exception. But his claim is valid. To paraphrase Jamy Ian Swiss, magicians tell you that they’re about to fool you, and then they do precisely that. Spiritualists use the tricks of magicians yet act as if they have authentic psychic powers. They prey on the credulity of believers. Vogler’s crew cons townsfolk with placebo potions and phony mentalism. And yet, the skeptic Dr. Vergerus is not an admirable character. He’s hell-bent on exposing, uncovering, and demystifying at all costs. Instead of treating truth as provisional — something to be refined as further evidence comes in, Vergerus sees truth dogmatically. Vogler’s worldview is a threat to Vergerus’s hermetically-sealed reality, and it must be destroyed at all costs.

Bergman has a not-entirely-undeserved reputation for bleakness in his films, and The Magician certainly has its share. Vergerus and Vogler exist in a permanent state of angst. But there’s also an overspill of life: nature, natural light, and the playful optimism of young love in the stables. The film exudes a spirit and anima that I discussed in my The Film Talk article The Emerging Genre of Cinema Anima. If death and chessboards are all you know about Bergman, I urge you to check out the upcoming Criterion edition of The Magician, my favorite film.

Suggested Bergman triple-feature: The Seventh Seal, Sawdust and Tinsel, & The Magician.

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Recommended reading: My friend comedian and podcaster Jesse Perry is really outdoing himself with a series of articles on classic film for the Examiner. His writing is thoughtful and engaging with continuing series such as films available at the local library and films treasured by his recently-departed uncle.

Tony Youngblood is the current Foursquare Mayor of the Belcourt Theatre, a film and music snob, and producer of the experimental improv music blog and podcast Theatre Intangible. His favorite films include Eric Rohmer’s The Green Ray, Abbass Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician, Lee Chang Dong’s Oasis, and Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap.

TFT 134 – I AM LOVE / CYRUS / Edinburgh Film Festival / Members Bonus Episode: SEX AND THE CITY 2

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TFT 134 running time: 48 minutes 41 seconds – 23.5mb mp3

I AM LOVE starts at 2 minutes 54 seconds

CYRUS starts at 27:15

Edinburgh Film Festival starts at 34 minutes 57 seconds

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HELP JETT FIND WORK – CLICK HERE FOR THE LINKED IN PROFILE

TFT 131 – PRINCE OF PERSIA / F FOR FAKE / CAT PEOPLE – CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE / [Member Bonus: The Essential Dennis Hopper]

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TFT 131 running time: 58 minutes 51 seconds – 27mb mp3

PRINCE OF PERSIA starts at 3 minutes

F FOR FAKE starts at 32 minutes 50 seconds

CAT PEOPLE – CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE starts at 45 minutes 50 seconds

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Also Mentioned: TALES FROM THE SCRIPT / STAR WARS – THE PHANTOM EDIT / Theatre Intangible / Criterion Cast

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The Essential Dennis Hopper running time: 47 minutes 45 seconds – 23mb mp3

Films Discussed: “The Twilight Zone” / Easy Rider / The Last Movie / Der amerikanische Freund / Apocalypse Now / River’s Edge / Blue Velvet / Hoosiers / Flashback / Super Mario Bros. / Speed / Basquiat / True Romance / “24″

It’s Akira Kurosawa’s 100th birthday – and to mark the occasion our next episode will feature a discussion with your genial co-hosts about ‘Yojimbo’, what may be his most entertaining film. I took a look at the new Criterion Blu-Ray at the weekend (it’s released today, along with its companion piece ‘Sanjuro’), and was instantly caught up in the guilty pleasure of watching a gruff/balletic man who seems to conceive of the samurai life as half-jester/half-killer set the wheels in motion to destroy the foundations of an oppressive economic war.

It’s Kurosawa’s statement about how capitalism eroded communitarian ways in Japan, it’s Toshiro Mifune’s statement of how to embody consciously limited aggression, it’s a dog’s statement of how to hold a human hand when there’s been a nasty fight, it’s filled with some of the most elegantly framed images you’ll ever see, it’s propelled by the most thunderous and amusing score this side of a fantasy Ennio Morricone-Marvin Hamlisch collaboration, it’s hugely entertaining, and the Blu-Ray is so clear you can see the hair in people’s ears. Which matters to some people, I guess…There’s also a genuinely fascinating audio commentary from Stephen Prince, locating the film in both the historical context of the story, and the 1960s when Kurosawa made it, a documentary about the film’s production, and the requisite essays and interviews in the handsomely produced booklet. We’ll talk more about ‘Yojimbo’ and ‘Sanjuro’ on the next episode – for now, here’s a thoughtful and fun piece about the first appearance of Mifune’s bodyguard, and a classy comparison for the second.

The decade draws to a close, and most of us will be feeling a sense of surreality as we reflect on what we were doing on New Year’s Eve 1999 – I was with four of my dearest friends; we had a gorgeous dinner by the fire, watched the London Millennium Dome’s opening ceremony define New Labour’s hubris (until a certain war in the Gulf); at midnight we literally did stand on the street and shout hello to everyone else who opened their door.  At that moment, I hadn’t seen ‘Magnolia’, soon to supplant ‘Wings of Desire’ as the film-most-likely-to-be-named-my-favourite-when-you-ask (I’d say they’re both pretty even now; the passage of time tends to iron out all your favourite movies into one long film marathon.  Film I’ve seen the most often?  Field of Dreams.  Film I’d most like to see again right now?  Hirokazu Koreeda’s After Life.  Film that every time I see it becomes increasingly difficult to deny a place as ‘Greatest Ever Made’ TM?  2001.  Or Touch of Evil.  Or Vertigo.  Or La Regle du Jeu.  Or La Belle et la Bete.  Or Close Encounters.  Or Once Upon a Time in America.  Or Fantasia.  Or Solaris.  Or.  Or.  Or)

And now we approach the end of another decade.  The friends I was with on Millennium Eve don’t see each other so often anymore; only two of the five even live in the same city, but we’re still in touch, from time to time at least.  Sometimes we talk about movies.  There have been at least 2500 films released in the US, UK and Ireland since January 1st, 2000.  I’ve probably seen a third of them. The decade’s end provides the opportunity to, as they say, discuss.  So please do join me.

My method?  Well, Top 100 lists are obvious, Top 50 too restrictive, our friend Glenn Kenny has gone for a happy medium, having just posted a Top 70 (and his comments section suggests it will be soon be a Top 71, as there’s always at least one film that gets left out).  And so, emboldened by Glenn, I’ll be posting some thoughts about the decade 2000-2009 over the next few weeks (My thoughts on Roger Corman’s ‘The Intruder’, previously planned for today will have to wait).

So, if you’re interested in my thoughts on ten years at the movies, let’s make a start.

I’m going to do three posts on this topic – beginning with the most over-rated and under-rated films; then a ‘runners-up’ list; then a list of the best films of the decade.  These lists are, of their nature, entirely subjective, rooted in my particular prejudices, wounds, joys, knowledge and desire.  You may dearly love a film that isn’t here; or you may loathe one that I adore.  That’s fine with me – this list doesn’t exist to validate or challenge anyone else’s preferences (although I do want to challenge some of the accepted norms of what passes for entertainment, and to shine a light on some films that might otherwise be too easily ignored).

Some initial headlines:

• There are no films by Woody Allen on any of these lists, despite the fact he made ten films in this period.  I would list 7 of his films from the previous decade; 9 from the 80s; 6 from the 70s that I’d be happy to watch any day of the week; one of which I consider one of the wisest and most comforting films I’ve ever seen.  I guess I’ll just say that we all want Woody to come back; and I’d be happy just to be working at 74 years old (Happy Birthday next week).
• There is only one movie by Martin Scorsese on my list of the best films of the decade, and it’s not the one you’re thinking.
• Ridley Scott isn’t on the best-of either; he makes it onto the ‘films I’m not supposed to like but did’ part of the list; and he’s disproportionately represented on the ‘over-rated’ list.
• I still haven’t had the chance/been in the right zone to see the following: ‘In the Mood for Love’, ‘Dancer in the Dark’, ‘Ivans XTC’, ‘The Pianist’, ‘Monster’, ‘The Fall’, or ‘The White Ribbon’.
• This decade saw the retirement from screen acting of Gene Hackman.  Having just seen the extraordinary (and troubling) Hackman-Marvin-Spacek-Ritchie thriller ‘Prime Cut‘ for the first time last night, I am only confirmed in my view that one Gene Hackman film could have covered a multitude of ‘Wanted‘-types (for what it’s worth, that Jolie-Freeman-Bekmambetov ‘thriller’s my nominee for the most graceless movie of the decade).  We also lost Robert Altman, who was making movies til the day he died and helps me understand (and feel at home in) America better than any other film-maker.
• I still wish that Kieslowski hadn’t died in 1995; that River Phoenix was still with us; that Robert de Niro hadn’t made any of the 19 (!) films he acted in this decade (the good news is ‘Everybody’s Fine’, which we’ll review next week; I’m not allowed to say much about it yet, but I’m sure it’s ok to tell you that it’s much, much better than most of us might have expected; we might even have a new Christmas classic on our hands.)
• I want someone to give Kelly Reichardt, Ramin Bahrani, Lukas Moodysson, Carlos Reygadas, Ray Lawrence, Paolo Sorrentino, John Hillcoat, Sean Penn, Rolf de Heer, John Carney, Tommy Lee Jones, James Marsh, Jason Lehel, Nicolas Klotz, Tom McCarthy, Philip Groning, and Sylvain Chomet the money to make whatever films they want.
• The best (and most diverse) career in directing in the 2000s?  Marc Forster.  Check out his filmography and let me know if I’m wrong.

And so, the lists begin:

Films of the Past Decade that I’m Not Supposed to Admit to Liking But Do

Finding Forrester: for being the only film in which Sean Connery cries without winking at the audience.

Cast Away: for a truly great central performance and honest engagement with the question of loss.

Thirteen Days: for being a political film about US foreign policy that lionises dialogue over threats; and turns that dialogue into the most exciting fuel for a thriller you could imagine.

Black Hawk Down: for trusting the audience with a recognition that war is horrifying, and that Somalis are human beings.

Crazy/Beautiful: for providing Kirsten Dunst with a platform for her considerably subtle acting chops, and giving the great Bruce Davison the meatiest role he had all decade.

Changing Lanes: for being far more intriguing about addiction and racism than its reputation would permit.

Frida: Julie Taymor’s first utterly fascinating and visually astonishing film of the decade.

Across the Universe: Taymor’s second.

The Hulk: Shot like a real comic book, presenting the struggle to get out from under your parents as the most titanic battle of all; best Nick Nolte rants of the decade.

Crash: It made me think about how we relate to each other; and that anything can happen.  That’s what it was trying to do.  I know it’s fashionable to denounce this film as if the fact that it feels staged (like a play, or, shall we say, a movie?) makes it the cinematic equivalent of demonic spawn; another way of looking at it would be to say that ‘Crash’ seems to have been critically mauled simply because it succeeded in what it was trying to do.

De-Lovely: The vastly undervalued Kevin Kline as Cole Porter in a film that comes alive with fantasy: perhaps the best musical of the decade.

Friday Night Lights: An American sports film which isn’t afraid to let its subjects lose.

Shall We Dance: The most entertaining Richard Gere/J Lo dance flick you’re ever likely to see.

Kingdom of Heaven: A much more thoughtful representation of Christians and Muslims fighting than had ever previously been filmed.

The Lord of the Rings: They’re huge, they’re brash, they’re unsubtle, and Peter Jackson is far too quick to resort to sweeping overhead shots of battlefields and rivers.  But it actually does tell a fun story – with some archetypal meaning – very well; and you can’t say fairer than that.

Inside Man: A thoroughly entertaining heist thriller with the best Christopher-Plummer-says-Dear-God scene in cinema history.  And a little bit of post-9/11 Spike Lee politicking too.

The Prestige: It tricked me, and I liked it.

Bobby: Like watching ‘Airport’ or ‘Hotel’ as written by Robert Frost with a touch of Naomi Klein.  When you’re in the right mood, that’s a good thing.

Apocalypto: Like being dragged behind that Raiders truck, Indy-style.  Except it was fun.

The Lost City: Andy Garcia’s polemic about Castro’s Cuba; politically skewed, but gorgeous to look at, and even moreso, to hear.

Kung Fu Panda: Amazingly enough, you will believe a Panda can fly.

Keeping the Faith: Amazingly enough, you will also believe that a Ben Stiller-Ed Norton/Rabbi-Priest comedy could remind you of Billy Wilder (and I’ve always liked him ;-))

Films I’m Either Supposed to Like but Don’t; or Were Already Bad to Start With

Be Kind Rewind: The most disappointing missed opportunity ratio of trailer-to-actual-film I can think of

Watchmen: Took a brilliant piece of philosophical reflection and turned it into a blood bath that included the burning alive of an African American man by hot frying oil.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: To paraphrase Jett, I get older faster just by thinking about it.

Gladiator: Guys fight several times; there’s a tiger; some guys in togas.  It’s very loud.

A Beautiful Mind: Shockingly inaccurate film about serious mental health issues.

Religulous: Shockingly disingenuous film about religion.

An American Carol: Shockingly dishonest film about politics. (Great Robert Davi performance, though.)

K-Pax: Shockingly inaccurate film about serious mental health issues (part 2).

Pearl Harbor: The Second World War as fought by robots who didn’t know it began before December 1941.

Swordfish: A pro-American terrorist film starring John Travolta and Halle Berry’s chest.

Chicago: A film in which no discovery seems apparent: everything’s in a plastic mold.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona: A film in which one of the characters is doing graduate studies in ‘Chinese’ but hasn’t learned that there’s no such thing.

City of God: A well-edited film that made the horror of childhood violence look like a music video.

Anger Management: Perhaps the reason Jack Nicholson is now apparently semi-retired.

Kill Bill: A hymn of worship to female-aping-male-violence is not pro-women.

The Life of David Gale: A film that portrays anti-capital punishment activists as willing to be executed themselves to prove the point is as nuanced in its view of mental distress as ‘A Beautiful Mind’.

Man on Fire: A film that tries to make Denzel Washington look like Jesus just after going on a murderous rampage, and portrays Mexico as hell on earth before printing an apology on the end credits.  Probably the most unpleasant experience I had at the movies in the past ten years.

The Motorcycle Diaries: Like Soderbergh’s later (and pretty magnificent in some ways) film, this Che biopic refuses to engage with the dark side of Guevera.  It seems so committed to playing him as an angel that telling the truth (that he killed people; lots of people; and sometimes summarily) eludes it.

V for Vendetta: One of several films that seem to think that a really cool, like, way to make people happy, like, would be to blow everything UP, man, and, like kill everyone who disagrees with us.

The Last King of Scotland: Which purports to offer some psychological insight into human evil, but turns into nothing much more than a well-crafted chase film.

And finally, a film whose awfulness speaks for itself, but whose lived experience is like sitting beside someone who changes the channels every ten seconds while hitting you in the face with a frying pan:

]]> http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/the-most-over-and-under-rated-films-of-the-decade/feed/ 38 http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/a-week-in-the-life-of-the-film-talk-1the-film-of-our-lifetime/ http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/a-week-in-the-life-of-the-film-talk-1the-film-of-our-lifetime/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:00:05 +0000 Gareth Higgins http://www.thefilmtalk.com/?p=4965

We Have a Winner

It’s been a momentous week in the life of The Film Talk – we’re crossing the rubicon of a century, with our hundredth episode on-line now.  It’s a massive episode, packed to the brim with our reviews of ‘The Messenger‘ (a nominee as Jett’s film of the year) and ‘The Box‘ (a fascinating exercise in proving the difference between passionate and corporate cinema), along with a special feature dedicated to defining the films that have meant to most of us over the life of TFT since we began on the 2nd November 2006, with what now sounds like a rather ill-advised review of ‘The Departed‘.  We were younger, less experienced, and, if we’re honest, had no idea what we were doing.  One of the greatest pleasures of creating TFT has been the personal relationship that has developed between the two of us, and with you, the Dear Listener.  We so appreciate you taking the time to listen, to read the site, and to provide your comments.  As you know, we’re in the midst of ‘Operation Save The Film Talk‘, our attempt to make the show financially viable by the end of the year.  There’s just about seven weeks left for us to raise pledges for the $900 a month we need to keep the show alive.  Please do let your friends know that we’ll be giving away some great gifts in the coming weeks, which they can register for by signing up to become a member*, for only $3 a month or whatever folk can afford.

This week on the site:

We’ve launched Operation Save The Film Talk with some inspiration from Dustin Hoffman, Lee Marvin, and Charlton Heston

The film and spirituality retreat that Gareth is co-leading in Los Angeles in January got some attention.

Episode 99 – our interview with critic Armond White and review of Disney’s A Christmas Carol was published.

Gareth wrote an appreciation of political documentary ‘Election Day’ and expanded on his theories of democracy (which involve kaftans and Darth Vader outfits)

Jett gave us his thoughts about design and design culture in a review of ‘Objectified’, along with characteristically Jett-esque riffs on the Hajj and his vacuuming robot.

And finally, Episode 100: The Messenger/The Box/The Films of TFT’s Lifetime arrived, fresh-minted and eager to be heard.

Over the next week we’ll be featuring our thoughts on ‘House of the Devil‘, Jett’s delight at the ‘How the West Was Won‘ Blu-ray, and of course, Episode 101, in which we plan to discuss Roland Emmerich’s ‘2012‘ and the very special film ‘Gaia‘.So enjoy, stay in touch, and let your friends know, that we’ll keep talking next week.

Jett & Gareth

Superman: The Movie – It’s the simple pleasures that I remember: Marlon Brando’s uppercrust English accent, small town Americana, Gene Hackman’s megalomania, Lois Lane’s sincere but complete missing of the point.

Planet of the Apes: It has a real story, with believable pacing, and actually manages to stay on the right side of melodrama in unfolding an only slightly implausible story about the end of the world.

Dr Strangelove: It has a real story, with believable pacing, and manages to stay on the right side of melodrama in unfolding a dramatic and only slightly implausible story about the end of the world.

The Black Hole: It has no believable characters, is paced like a rollercoaster whose tracks haven’t been oiled, and is brim-full of melodrama, but it was the first film I ever saw, and therefore can’t be evaluated as anything other than miraculous nostalgia.  I can’t wait to see it again.

All four screen tonight, tomorrow and Sunday, except ‘The Black Hole’ which you can see tonight and tomorrow only. Join us if you can.

Tarkovsky’s  ‘Andrei Rublev’, anointed weekly by Jett as the ‘best film ever made’ seems to me to be one of the few films guaranteed to be watched centuries from now, if the art form that captured my heart (and so often betrays it – which means that movies are, in the end, very much like us.  Humans, I mean, not Jett and I per se) lasts past the point when our brains will have been made half synthetic by the friends of Ray Kurzweil.  (To those who may now be complaining at how long that first sentence was, all I can say is, wait til you see ‘Andrei Rublev’.) I finally got to see the film at the weekend; I wanted to wait to see it in a cinema, cued by my old friend the wonderful film critic and art historian Mike Catto who says that watching movies on television is like going to the British Museum to see a mummy rather than visiting the pyramids.  I’m grateful for DVD letting me see films that otherwise would only be evocative titles in my head, but when opportunity arises to get into a theatre, I take it.

And so, ‘Andrei Rublev’.

It’s a film about resurrection – the central character (who certainly isn’t a protagonist in the traditional sense – he responds to circumstances, but doesn’t exactly drive the story) is acted upon by the tragic and awful events that can occur when political power and religious law get too tightly bound together; he changes his mind about some things; he loses the comfort to paint the icons that the world knows him for; he fails to intervene to save someone beautiful; he tries to save someone beautiful; he seems ultimately resigned to the world being broken, and to the medieval Russian church being utterly corrupt, but he eventually finds faith that there is a way to let his gift use him.  And, five hundred years later, in the film’s coda, it does.

Now, I want you to forget what you just read: because it implies that ‘Andrei Rublev’ is nothing more than an epic adventure story, comparable to those other two-named eponymous behemoths ‘Ben-Hur’ and ‘El Cid’.  Certainly it tells a story – although the fact that the story seems to include every psychological motivation and consequence known to humanity makes that an understatement so flimsy it might as well be gibberish.  I can’t convey how the visual shock of this film affected me – my friend who loves it deeply is right when he says that it’s as if Tarkovsky took a time machine back to the fifteenth century and unobtrusively filmed people suffering and praying and living.

It looks that authentic.

And it feels alive.  It has some of the most striking images I’ve ever seen – the horse rolling over and up at the beginning (which seems to me to be a direct reference to Robert Bresson’s ‘Au Hasard Balthasar’, inverting that film’s ending, and an explicit reference to the third day after the Crucifixion), the running of the monks in the rain, the girl frightened and angered by the paint smeared on the wall, the astonishing sequence of horrific pillage, in which one of the most terrifying things in cinema occurs (no more unpleasant than what happens to the bad guys at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, but the tone is so…real?…that you have to look away, and can’t ignore what this film is saying about the misuse of power), the tension of waiting for the bell to chime, and the very last image: four horses, alive and representing life itself, a quantum leap beyond the film’s earlier equine resurrection.

Like I said, it’s a film about life after death, and resurrection of all kinds – the kind that billions of people imagine for the human race, the kind that’s necessary to get up every morning, the kind that the medium in which Tarkovsky worked needs with a kind of desperation I’m not sure it has known before. Cinema’s a miracle, but has forgotten it.  Does anyone know how to bring Tarkovsky back from the dead?

For more on Tarkovsky have a look at our friend Dmitry Trakovsky’s lovely documentary.  Meantime?  Life.

[Images above from the wonderful DVD Beaver site - check it out here.]