melcher-2001

Eureka

This is my favorite film from one of my favorite directors of the seventies and eighties. Nicolas Roeg brought us 'Performance', 'Walkabout', Don't Look Now', The Man Who Fell To Earth', 'Insignificance' & 'The Witches'. All of them feature complex ideas, characters and situations drawing the patient viewer deeply into a mirror realm of identity and revelation.

I've watched most of his films numerous times, and each time I find new layers and new themes, all revolving around the puzzles of identity, the relationship between spirit and the physical world, life and death, meaning and emptiness. His characters are often both larger than life and familiar, in their desires, pursuits and relationships. All of them offer up a deep set of questions. None of them offer definitive answers or conclusions. I go away carrying a new way of seeing myself in the mirror.

I believe 'Eureka' is Roeg's masterpiece. It's his most disciplined, visually stunning and emotionally wrenching. It features a most outstanding cast (Gene Hackman, Theresa Russell, Rutger Hauer, Joe Pesci, Mickey Rourke), delivering some of the most memorable lines I've ever carried away from a film. It's both a mystery and a crime thriller, packed with visuals and dialogue that touches on the most enduring themes of philosophy and religion, as well as the mystical realms of tarot and alchemy. It's a interwoven with fine details and meticulously placed visual motifs that return and repeat and reward repeated viewing.

The film isn't for everyone. It's a very serious film, with stark elements of sex and violence and operatic set pieces. Some may find scenes that are excessive or even offensive to current tastes. However, there isn't a single scene or shot (Roeg also worked as a cinematographer) I find that the accumulated effect, rather than being gratuitous, is largely overwhelmed by the greater conversation about living and dying. This is both a romantic tragedy and a doorway into deeper ways of regarding the world.

I want to honor the actor, the late Gene Hackman, who performs here in one of his best and most compelling roles.

Note: Roeg is also credited with depicting both one of the best love scenes ('Don't Look Now'), and the most unpleasant ('The Man Who Fell To Earth')

With all of the experimental and independent cinema around, it's a treat to discover a contemporary film with the distinct touch of a master. What makes a masterpiece? It's in the pacing, the framing and the discipline and patience to tell a story with depth. It's a combination that requires a degree of maturity and mastery of the craft, rarely acheived by new directors.

'Close Your Eyes' is an experience like contemplating the ocean waves as they meet the shore. It deals with themes of aging and memory and the realm where cinema encounters the world. It requires that we slow down and immerse ourselves in each moment as it unfolds, revealing each step in a journey about longing and a quest to discover who we are. It's a film about faces and places and encounters with others, taking us on a journey through time and spaces, where actual people live and breathe.

We live in an age of digital spectacles filled with flash and surprises that offer the adrenalized experience of watching long commercials. 'Close Your Eyes' demonstrates the power of film, in the hands of one of its masters, to bring us back to ourselves.

The performances are great (particularly Collin Farrell snd Cristin Milioti) and it's well made, and in the end it's basically a portrait of a total monster. I guess it suits America in the Age of Trump.

In the end I thought writers take themselves a bit too seriously for a comic book movie. But that's just me. America loves its gangsters, and this is a perfect picture of the darkest side of a failed society. It's billed as a tragedy (even the writers proclaim it so), and that it is...a tragedy with no exit.

In the past The Penguin was portrayed as sort of a comic villain, with his ridiculous costumes and makeup. Here there are no disguises and no humor.

It's the Batman's world I suppose, courtesy of Frank Miller. It's interesting how DC comics, which invented the all-too-perfect Superman character, has gone to the opposite extremes by idolizing villains like The Joker and The Penguin and morose heroes like Batman. Then again, I suppose that's the times we're in...rather humorless and bleak these days.

Unless they come up with a more interesting Batman character, at least one who can smile at himself once in a while, I don't think I'd want to follow these villains further down their rabbit holes. Enough of that in the news.