Earthquake Bird 2019
R - 106 min
Tension in this is palpable.
Guilt is a strong motivator, and we find that the other side of the world, for this bird, Lucy, it is not far enough to escape it. Played by Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina is the first time I saw her acting), she has a way of putting on cold and indifferent, or distant that is unique in that only her eyes can be read. Her acting, along with her other 2 principles in this screenplay, Riley Keough and Naoki Kobayashi, is clean, taut, brilliant. Great job of directing by Wash Westmoreland, camera work is Chung-hoong Chung. He used traditional framing and color, and it was an incredibly well-shot piece. The editing, especially the creepy tense sequences and "disappearing people" in flash moments, was brilliant, reminiscent of some of the "shock" work done in the 80s, cleaned up and sfx'd. No shots were strikingly outside of the mindset of Lucy's point of view, but blended in seamlessly with the narrative.
Summary: it all added up to a very slow burn of a psycho-drama, surprisingly fresh and unexpected really. Great handling of the narrative sequences as well as far as the timing and flashbacks, which were limited in their screen time, but even more effective because of that. Shifting time around here was a great device, and although the pieces were diverse and widespread, it still held together nicely and kept tension right up to the very last shot.
Because of the trifecta of acting, directing, and camera work in this film, the following happens: The genuinely soft and approachable character of Teiji comes slowly into focus for us despite his seemingly rigid exterior manor. When Lucy is tearing down the stereotypes of Japanese people, along with the "height" thing that she points out as false, we are along with her in the ride of the romance that gains our trust as the audience as well,. We feel betrayed with her when the novice American girl, Lily, comes between them. So...there is a real consistency here in the film's total approach that sticks closely to the Lucy character, and keeps us in suspense, and the suspension of disbelief. Even the side actors and smaller parts were cast and played to perfection, especially Mrs. Katoh by Akiko Iwase. I still think casting directors should be getting their own Oscars (see this ARTICLE).
Very nicely done.
- Agitatus
The Irishman
- a Martin Scorsese film
Tribeca-Sikelia-Winkler-STX
R - 3 Hours 29 min
When you take part in a Scorsese picture, you’re participating in a history. It’s a history played back with as real an intent and as close to honesty as you can get. We’re talking about his version of reality and history, sure; “Things as I see them”, by M. Scorsese. But things as he has seen them stay faithfully close to the truth as we can know it with regards to the world that he was birthed out of, and was close to, in regards to “La Familia” and his ethnic roots.
I don’t personally buy everything that Marty has done, especially when he went to work “outside his neighborhood” element in works like “The Last Temptation of Christ”. Boxcar Bertha was better than that. Ok, that was a low blow, anything was better than BBertha…but really let me sum that up this way: There was a reason that Marty dropped out of his studies to be a Catholic Priest, just like there was a reason that Nikos Kasantzakis was always just next to excommunication status with the Greek Orthodox Church…incendiary hyperbolistic rabble-rousing showmanship. Ok, wait…so maybe the reasons for both of these are not the same, you get the idea.
But I’m not roasting Mr. Scorsese here. Hold on please.
You have to know that all these fireworks are tightly wrapped, under control, and orchestrated. And did you know too that despite the fact that fireworks are almost exclusively set off in the hours after dark, you’ll notice that they have the tendency when lit to be so bright as to bring out the details and contours, lines, and pit marks and eye bags of the person next to you? Yes, they do that. Seen often as a singular source of light, every bit as bright as lightning at times, fireworks for those brief moments become a searing tool of exposition and self-reflectance.
So ok, let me re-define, or add to the definition here: When you take part in a Scorsese picture, you’re participating in a history that goes off like a blazing firework, searing the backside of your eyes, sometimes even until the next day if you stare right at it.
And now that I’m through all that buildup, about the motion picture at hand…The Irishman. Warts, eyebags, yep, all that and more. The Shearan daughters do not HAVE to say anything, no lines of dialogue in this extensively long motion picture, other than “Where are you going Daddy?”, in order to completely dismantle the whole charade, to keep it clear the Xray vision that Marty put into this, to keep us the audience from becoming too enamored as we have in times past with underworld life, with mob action and revenge, with their brazen misdirection and misbehavior. The girls, as we see them grow up during the course of the story, return time and again in those key moments with knowing and accusing eyes, body language, and in the end a clear demonstration of the cost of doing business with the devil, or playing with fire. The lines of dialogue are not necessary of course. It only takes a glance to bring about the clear and ever-present silent dialogue that we have as we’re absorbed into the story crashing in. This silent underbody of subtext and meaning grows in this film like some kind of unavoidable volcanic gush, the irony being that the actual human interaction, banality, and tone of conversations get lower and lower, the pace of each scene more patient, the implied action always just a bit off screen, and the suspense palpable. Take for instance the conversation in the slow car ride in the red car near the end, as the men discuss a fish being in the car, the smell of it, the smell of it never coming out of the car, the over-the-top worn cliche’ of being told that and then layered with yet another statement that is even more asinine, “You should remember that. It will help you in life”. Funny, yes, but deadpanned, dropped like a lead weight into the atmosphere of the car. In all that drudgery… all those fireworks, we keep wondering when they’re going off.
And then I have to turn my attention to the scene in prison, DeNiro and Pesci, the dynamic duo sitting next to each other, looking about as old as they can make them, sharing what…a loaf of bread and “the best grape juice” that bribery can buy in their circumstances (unlike the scene in Goodfellas, very distanced now, where the whole group of robust men have their own cell block and cooking area, smoking cigars and reading papers, playing cards, and cutting up garlic until it’s so thin it melts in the pan). There they are, breaking that bread together, taking hunks of it by hand, and dipping it in the "best" grape juice…together. Communion. Clear and simple. “He who dips his hand with me in the wine…”. All the scenes after that deal with the futile and pandering, vacuous attempt at remorseless, religious, rote dogmatisms that leave us more distanced, and our character more lonely than can be imagined. The last shot of the film, echoing another shot earlier in the film of his hero Jimmy when he left the doors to his room in the suite slightly ajar, says all there needs to be said. That’s why it’s the last shot in the film. The cataclysmic dead end, no daughters or wife there to hand-hold, no one to ask forgiveness from other than the young and contrasting, apple-cheeked priest and his supposed authoritative ability to negotiate a peace that was never sought from the start, until now...no one in the audience that would walk out wanting to be in his shoes, an ultimate loneliness.
Wait, it was quoted from the start wasn’t it, of his film career? I mean except for Mean Streets when Marty was breaking in his chops, his very first film, Taxi Driver…yep…”God’s lonely man.” Possibly prophetic?
Maybe it’s Marty that has felt alone all this time in his struggle to use this very difficult art form to convey just what that is, that far end of the spectrum of life that is lived with covered and closed dishonesty, that vacuum, unavoidable, that makes you stick your finger in a candle flame to experience what fire is really like because you know hell is described that way. It makes you shave your hair into a mohawk and buy a gun and get close to a politician that is spouting empty, selfish promises, then cleaning up his work for him in the red light district. It makes you crazy that you can’t buy love even with a drawer full of jewels and a closet full of furs, and you definitely can’t buy trust with it. It makes you even more crazy when you realize that even beatings from your old man can’t beat that desire out of you once you’ve gotten hold of it and drop out of school to work at a cab stand. Or you end up reciting self-centered poetry in a small and unknown bar. To watch your restaurant burn down. To find out your boy gets gunned down when he just wanted to stand up for himself. To waste towels on a guy bleeding on your doorstep.
This I am sure is Marty’s swan song of a film, at least with regards to the whole gangster genre. I don’t think you can say any more than this one without it seeming like you’re just bringing up more facts from the books, going over territory again. But….you know Marty is Marty, and hey, “whad elsa he gonna do eh”? Personally however, I think he should, as his predecessor has advised, “Leave the gun, and take the cannoli”.
- Agitatus
PS: I believe I’ll want to write another post on this, I think so…don’t know yet. This seems enough, but I just saw the film, so it may take awhile to settle in.
