Too Many Movies Tuesday: On A Wednesday?

Precaution Against Fanatics
Directed by Werner Herzog, 1969

It's only 12 minutes long, and how long that feels depends on how much one enjoys watching a bunch of oddballs repeat various phrases before an old man walks over and starts telling the camera they have to "go". There's a solid chunk of funny lines that get some screen time, the best being when a horse track's resident doper yanks his shirt open and says "this is the naked chest of an honest man! Dishonest! No! Look at this naked chest!" Herzog describes the movie as one long practical joke, and there's a couple of flamingos in it.

God's Angry Man
Directed by Werner Herzog, 1980

The best part of this documentary on an old school televangelist is the extended sequence where the guy reads off the amount of donations coming in live. Revealing far more about himself than when he's interviewed, Dr. Gene Scott doesn't sound like a greedy sociopath at first, but by the time he's reached the fourth real-time minute of mumbling out numbers while snatching more pledges away from an offscreen hand, it's not difficult to grasp how twisted the guy really is. By the time the movie reaches the end of its running time, with him and his 70's mustached crew yelling at little wind-up monkey dolls in a strange ritual meant to humiliate "the bureaucrats", it's just an extra large hammer hitting a nail that's long buried. Whether this particular shitbird necessitated the focus or not, God's Angry Man is a delightful slice of justifiable ass kicking. Picking on Christians is easy, and it's fucking boring. Picking on some Christians who deserve it--that's art.

The Perfect Getaway
Starring Timothy Olyphant, 2009

Most movies set in Hawaii--the ones that aren't Predator--come bearing the one piece of Hollywood gossip that's become well-known fact: these aren't movies that actors turn down, because it's a free trip and a helluva vacation. (Track down old interviews with the cast members of Lost who deigned to speak out prior to the realization that they'd been handed a meal ticket--if memory serves, at least three of them took the assumed short-term gig solely for the hotel rooms.) Getaway isn't much of a movie, and the parts that are don't amount to more than a quarter of its length. Excepting one over-the-top editing trick that works better than any line delivery would as a "this person is really, really crazy" piece of exposition, the effects are bizarrely chosen and too CGI'd to tolerate. The plot is spastic, with a nearly twenty minute flashback sequence stuck right in the middle of the film's first major fight scene, thus annihilating the only momentum the film had (surprisingly) earned. And yet?

Olyphant. While he can't take credit for the content of his bizarrely appealing lines, the method with which he delivers them--animated, crazed, hungry--isn't to be shared. Stopping midstory to pant out a love for Nicholas Cage, childishly jealous of his girlfriend's preference for Johnny Depp, proudly anointing himself "An American Jedi--that's for you", Olyphant's performance nearly redeems a crassly put together B-movie, only for the filmmakers to chuck it away at the climax when they choose to rely on an oddly unappealing Milla Jovovich, who apparently decided she didn't really want to act anymore after she filmed her introductory scenes. It's a gorgeous movie--Kauai is, to put it mildly, impossible to shoot poorly--but it's also tremendously slow whenever Olyphant isn't onscreen, and it ends up being a film that barely deserves to get classified as thriller.

The Silence
Features Nudity, 1963

While the classic SNL parody of the stereotypical 60's Swedish film looms heavy over Silence, there's still something to be gained in watching a shitty little boy piss in a hallway after getting a private display of acrobatics from a group of foreign dwarves, the same dwarves that dressed him up in a Strawberry Shortcake dress for no discernible reason. (Because it's funny? Was Bergman interested in being funny on this one?) Of course, that scene isn't all that The Silence has to offer--there's also a butler that looks like Orville Redenbacher, one of the first major film depictions of a woman masturbating onscreen, and there's even a buggery moment, although it isn't that obvious, no matter what the internet tells you. (It's not really Bergman's fault, but if the audience is supposed to pick up on anal sex, it helps if people have their pants pulled down, or off entirely.) While it's short on plot--the smart sister is sick, the sexy sister is horny, the kid is king of the shitheads--The Silence is a pretty movie, laden with all kinds of Kubrickian hallways to go along with the classic look-at-these-cheekbones close-ups that made the cranky Swede a superstar.

The Steel Helmet
Directed by Samuel Fuller, 1950

This is what they're all supposed to be like. Courageous, innovative, and, even at sixty years old, unique as hell. There's something pretty humiliating when a movie from 1950--shot in ten days, dependent on stock footage and B-movie character actors--remains a far stronger indictment of racism and chickenhawk patriotism than any war film of recent memory. War stories don't have to be political, but their nature makes it so. "If you die, I'll kill you." Yeah. That's from this one. This is the kind of shit that grown-ups are supposed to make.

For All Mankind
Features Lots of Space, 1989

Although the absence of onscreen talking heads and the lack of any subtitled explanation for what or who one is seeing make for a decent attempt at turning For All Mankind into an "art" film, the movie is pretty much going to be won or lost on the strength of the found footage that it consists of. On the big screen, it's probably revelatory--much of the NASA footage it contains had gone unseen until Al Reinert assembled it, and those moments that had--Armstrong's touchdown, the first time a human being saw the entirety of Earth from orbit--have lost little of their impact. Brian Eno's score is excellent wallpaper, and it's difficult not to feel the excitement stirring when seeing a massive room of scientists realize that their life's work had actually paid off. Somewhere amidst the unseen voices, one of the astronauts explains it like this: "I just told myself it wasn't going to happen. If I believed this was really happening, I'd never have been able to do my job." It's a touching bit of surprise, one that Reinert's commitment to anonymity eventually drives home. These were the people who made it happen, but what they did, they did in no small part for everyone. (And they don't even include a fucking "earn this" to ruin the moment.)

No One Will Play With Me
So Many Fucking Children, 1976

Another Herzog short, this one a weird little fable about the boy that no one wants to play with. His clothes are hand-me-downs! His parents beat him! He has a talking crow! By the end, all the kids have gathered together to play with a couple of guinea pigs that appear to be drunk, and everybody has learned a lesson that nobody attempted to teach them. Being kind by osmosis? The acting is shit, but hey: most of these kids just cleared toddler status.

From Paris With Love
Produced by Luc Besson, 2010

After a jaw-droppingly bad domestic scene that succeeds only in showcasing the charisma black hole that is Jonathan Rhys Meyers, From Paris With Love delivers two excellent action setpieces, both of which feature John Travolta killing lots and lots of what he excitedly refers to as "Asian dudes". While both sequences seem stolen directly off of an HK actioner's storyboard, they're still pretty fucking satisfying, as are the two brief scenes where Travolta's Charlie Wax attempts to explain the movie's plot, eventually resorting to repeating the word "Terrorists!" Otherwise, the remaining 80% of the movie is almost completely unbearable, a hodgepodge of irritating dialog and Hogan's Alley shoot-outs, and a particularly promising scene--Wax shooting a female sleeper agent point blank at a dinner party--is choreographed with so little care towards comprehensibility that it's questionable whether there was any fake blood available on set that day.

Everlasting Moments
Directed by Jan Troell, 2008

It's not supposed to be a contest, but if it were, here's the winner.

Everlasting Moments loses a bit of its power when it's on television, but that's pretty much the only way anyone got the chance to see it. (Even then, the film has ended up as a "Blockbuster Exclusive" DVD for what must have been financial reasons, but The Criterion Collection will apparently release the film in the near future.) It's gotten pretty solid reviews, one of those from King of the Iconoclasts Armond White, who went so far as to say "Don't talk about 2009 movies unless you've seen Jan Troell's comeback film. Everything that makes movies matter is in Everlasting Moments..." (He then goes onto plump for Gamer over Avatar, so this happens to be one of those times when Armond is spot-the-fuck-on.)

Still, Everlasting Moments isn't exactly what those raves describe. While its plot is dependent on its main character's lifelong relationship with art, with her photography eventually becoming the smoldering core of a will to live, the film isn't really about taking pictures. It's about her, the drunken, abusive husband that torments and loves her, the girls she raises to become women, the crippling brutality of poverty & sexism, but more than anything, it's about determination. Any plot synopsis might end up with it being classed alongside something like Angela's Ashes or In America, but Everlasting Moments is able to surpass that kind of period self-worship on its oddly fervent commitment to family. Whereas the term is one that gets thrown around mostly in political based culture war arguments, Troell's obsessed study of what "family values" might actually mean, what time does to the relationships that blood (or love) create ends up as some kind of bizarrely relevant time capsule. Although the impoverished circumstances that an alcoholic patriarch creates give way a bit in the concluding moments, by then, the film has already rounded itself to the point of view that something like Big Fan seems terrified to acknowledge: whatever it takes to make you happy works just fine, and whatever you have to do to survive is worth creating the space to do it in. Interestingly enough, the film's message only becomes clear as the years it depicts begin to mount up--even at the halfway point, Everlasting Moments behaves like any other period drama set in squalor. But somewhere along the way--when a mother's loss can only be realized through a haunting memorial, or when a startled crush looks down at his howling dog and realizes how long he's been desired--the film vaunts right over the circumstantial details that populate it.

They still make them like this. You just have to work harder to track them down.

-Tucker Stone, 2010

Comments

[Mario M.]

You should do more of these.

Is the Herzog stuff on a single DVD? Or is it like a collection?

[Tucker Stone]

Herzog put out a six disc box set a few years ago of a huge portion of his shorts and documentaries.
http://www.wernerherzog.com/index.php?id=48

It has a bit of product-for-obsessives quality to it, but it's not like there's an heir to Werner's throne on the way. No reason not to roll with the king!

[Mario M.]

Sick. Thanks.

I'm always down for some Herzog. I bought the over-sized Lynch box set on similar impulse so I'm sure I'll get something out of it.

[Nathan]

Was the Bad Lieutenant movie with Nicholas Cage movie that Herzog made any good?

[Tucker Stone]

I missed that one. I think I might have missed it on purpose?

[Nathan]

Heh. Been meaning to check it out since its Herzog and all my IRL friends are NC movie junkies so for once the best of both worlds.

Mainly curious though cause I saw a clip on youtube of Nicholas Cage yelling an iguana only he can see in the middle of a police station

[Tucker Stone]

I'm sure I'll check it out eventually. He apparently pulls a gun on an elderly woman, that's always worth the price of admission.

[Matthew J. Brady]

Your review of Everlasting moments is compellingly nonspecific. That is, the way you describe it makes me want to see it, without feeling like I really know what happens in the movie. I like that.

[Tucker Stone]

Part of my (well, our) enjoyment of Everlasting Moments came from having no real idea of what it was we were going to watch, and then having even the one minor expectation thoroughly trounced within the first 40 minutes. I hadn't read much about it going in, but what I had read built the expectation that it was a 2+ hour praise for still photography, a sedate, old school Euro flick with lots and lots of static takes and ponderous silences. If you ever check it out, i'd love to know what you think--Nina and I are really taken with it.

[K. Crystal]

The thing that has stuck with me from God's Angry Man was that band. Herzog dedicates a good 3-5 minutes observing them perform, and it's so mellow and hypnotic that it just weirds me out. Like, I begin imagine myself making a living like that. And I find out I don't hate it.

[Tucker Stone]

This is why I should take notes when I'm watching movies, although I doubt I ever will. That band was hypnotic, and so committed! Initially, it's a "i don't like this kind of music" reaction, but the footage goes on for so long, and they just--they work so hard, and they do have melody, and they seem so proud of each other with such genuine sincerity. I didn't think about being one of them, but I'll admit I did start wondering what it would be like to have that as a legacy, to be that father looking at a son who he trained, who has become his partner, and who will eventually replace him.

It helps that they never speak, that the only relationship the viewer has is with their work, never as people. Herzog works hard to make Scott a person, to show his parents and his homelife, but he limits the band to pure work, and he barely shows them through anything but the lens in which a regular viewer of the show might experience them--you're right to call that out, and I was totally remiss in not mentioning them above.

[AComment]

Sweden roolz France droolz?