hypersquared

On the list of films that will almost certainly be seen by the tiniest portion of those who should see it, Ken Jacobs' nearly seven-hour, kaleidoscopic magnum opus may be tops. An exhaustive, sprawling history of America -- mainly from the Industrial Revolution on -- in the form of found footage and recordings, as seen through the eyes of those on the margins (i.e. intellectuals, socialists, artists), it is perhaps the most compelling case imaginable that we, as a race, are simply doomed to forever suffer for our worst impulses. Or at least until we annihilate ourselves.

Sounds like fun, right? In many respects, it is. Jacobs takes archival footage that illustrates America's most appallingly racist and imperialist worldviews, as assigned to us via the popular culture -- a Nelson Rockefeller campaign film, an Al Jolson blackface musical, a patronizing educational film about "conscience", etc -- and inter-cuts them with footage he shot and abandoned in the late 1950s, a series of avant-garde living theater pieces, in which fellow filmmaker Jack Smith cavorts in ecstatic lunacy on the streets of New York, upsetting the torpor of 1950s life, delighting children, drawing the bewilderment of adults (and the consternation of cops).

Less fun is the portrait of Jacobs' other friend, the "born loser" Jerry Sims, whose formidable intelligence and cultural awareness cannot help his complete inability to function in modern society. He begs his (poor) friends for money. He smells bad. He is so overcome by the injustice of the world that he can barely dress himself. Jack's exuberance lifts the first half of the film while Jerry's despondency dominates the second, so that by the end we're forced to ask ourselves how we confront our monumentally f**ked up world: are we Jack (The Spirit Not of Life But of Living) or are we Jerry (Suffering)?

Jacobs seems attracted to Jack but to find Jerry's condition inevitable. The first is the truest state of who we are as human souls, the second is the only true possible effect of a world governed by capitalism. Throughout, Jacobs provides hundreds of on-screen texts, some of it his own writing and some that of others. As a leftist, Jacobs makes Michael Moore seem positively mainstream by comparison, but his arguments are more philosophical than Moore's, and even more persuasive. Many of the texts are presented on only one frame of the film, so that on a DVD you're forced to stop the player, back up and read. (In a film screening, of course, they would just go by in a blink). This approach demands interaction and engagement on the part of the viewer. As it is in society, if you want to get at these truths, you have to go get them. No one's going to make it easy for you, and the truth is that the power structure we have is actually going to make it as difficult as possible for any of us to know anything. Jacobs has left as his life's work an epic testimony that could, if enough people just took the time and made that effort, contribute to a more peaceful world, but I think he knows that probably won't happen.

This was my first Hou Hsiao-hsien picture, and I feel like I've been missing out on quite a lot, seeing as he's been doing this for about a quarter century. Not that I'm experiencing the kind of panic and regret that I might if I'd only just discovered Godard or Jarmusch. Three Times is simply the kind of movie I gravitate to, and I'm hoping it points the way to a trove of similar pleasures, even if it isn't quite a masterpiece on its own.

As I'm sure others around here have written, Three Times is literally about three different times, as in eras: 1911, 1966, and 2005, and each of the forty-minute featurettes in this triptych is defined by a separate thematic quality: the 1960s, naturally, by love; the end of Dynastic rule by freedom; and contemporary China by youth. All of them, however, involve love on some level, or, at the very least, sex. Each chapter centers on a man and a woman (played by Chang Chen and Shu Qi in each case) caught up in some variation of romantic or erotic involvement that reflects the three themes.

What I love about Hou's approach is that each of these forty-minute pieces tells no more "story" than an average Hollywood film would chew up and spit out in its first four or five minutes. In "A Time for Love" (the 1960s chapter) little more "happens" than a young soldier returning from military leave to find that the girl he's been writing to has moved to another town, so he tracks her down and they spend a few hours together. The other stories cover similarly scant territory while Hou allows his camera and the nearly constant presence of popular music to evoke the tempo and space of his characters' lives. Hou and his writer Chu T'ien-wen find worlds of behavior to explore and time worth spending in scenes that most writers would consider the merely necessary business of establishing a premise and getting their characters into position.

If the movie doesn't exactly reach ecstatic heights, it isn't for lack of Hou's ability to fulfill his own purpose, but merely because his purpose contains almost no emotional arc, either for his characters or for his audience, and it isn't loaded up with the kind of ornate, spiritual metaphor that similarly deliberate films by, say, Bergman and Tarkovsky are. Hou doesn't seem interested (at least here) in either God or people, per se, but rather our cognitive relationship to the passage of time and the subtle but profound effect of small decisions on the course of our own histories.

I went to a party last night -- Seventies themed -- where the big event was a DVD showing of the embarrassing Robert Stigwood production of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (in honor of both the recent passing of Billy Preston, and Paul McCartney's notable 64th birthday today). I hadn't seen the movie since it came out, when I was about eleven and, at the time, I liked it. Even though I was a huge Beatles fan (I knew most of their songs by heart at that age) it had never occurred to me that this movie was anything but a fitting tribute.

Later, in retrospect, I could reflect on it and realize that it was probably a terrible movie. Certainly, at some point, I understood that the very idea of having these mostly dreadful artists performing the Beatles' best songs in some trumped up narrative was simply a kind of heresy. Yet, the fact remained that I had never had these feelings while actually watching the movie.

Until last night, when I learned one should never, ever trust their eleven year old self to properly judge anything.

Let me tell you that there is bad. There is awful. And then there is "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band," the movie. For jaw-in-your-lap appalling, this movie is right down there with the Eighties classic "The Apple," but the fact that Sgt. Pepper had resources -- money, well-known performers (I can't bring myself to say "stars"), and licensed access to the greatest catalog of popular songs ever -- makes the depths of its failings all that more profound.

First I'll tell what I saw, then I'll tell you what I thought.

I saw:

• The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton being directed in a style that (I think) was intended to emulate the body language of silent film comedy. (Other than George Burns' narration, the movie has no spoken dialogue. Presumably, this was to cover for the inability of any of the performers to act. The great blunder of course, is that silent comedy acting is still acting, and no one involved here can do it).

• Dentally-challenged Peter Frampton and appeal-challenged Sandy Farina gazing at each other, presented as the film's central romantic purpose. (P.S. Where the eff did Sandy Farina come from and where the eff did she go?)

• George Burns doddering around on stiff, ninety year old legs, croaking the lyrics to "Fixing a Hole."

• "Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds" transformed into a production number mounted on a pair of billboards (with stages) over the Sunset Strip. A third-rate Pointer Sisters knockoff called Stargard played a group called the Diamonds (presumably their leader was Lucy) and performed on one billboard while the Bee Gees and Frampton gaped from the other with all the lust they could simulate. (Given that about 90 pounds of glitter were used in an attempt to obscure the distinctly unattractive qualities of each of the Stargard gals, the lads faked it the best they could). Every now and then during this number, we'd cut to an extreme close- up of the tears welling in Sandy Farina's eyes as she stared from the street below. Oh, yeah, she was feelin' it.

And those are just the start. And now, here's what I thought:

What was going through their heads? I mean, every one of them -- performers, producers, director, cinematographer, editor, grips -- what were they thinking? The only sensible response to any aspect of this debacle, at any stage of the production, would have been: "Holy mother of God. We are making something monumentally awful, and not only that, we're taking the music of the Beatles down with us. This movie is going to exist in some form forever. We will not be able to hide from history. One hundred years from now they'll still know that we did this, and my name will still be on it."

It's worth noting that in some cultures, to this day, people kill themselves when they know they have committed far less shameful acts than these people did.