vince-41

Everybody's lying. You shouldn't analyze a film to know whether it's good or not. Analyzing wouldn't make it worse, you will just come to the same conclusion. Only thing that matters, is how film feels, not necessarily right after you saw it, but in general. Take "Mulholland Drive". The film might seem pretty primitive. Lynch takes the story of the naive actress's broken dreams in Hollywood, and blows it up, making it surreal and reminiscent of Hollywood noir. Is it easy to do? Theoretically speaking, yes, it is. But you can feel that movie is really good, because you can feel that for Lynch it's not just an exercise in twisting and turning rules of the narrative. (Lost Highway was the exercise, but exercise so splendid, even if it was cold and artificial, it still was mesmerizing). Lynch's strong points here are, first of all, is that he shows us both versions of what happened. None of the parts of the film are dread, no matter what hundreds of reviewers been saying. They are like two mirrors that were put together under weird angle. Second of all, even though you can point out similarities between two parts, they are totally different. Everytime you trying to put all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together, they don't fit. And that's what films supposed to do anyway. I anticipate, in the near future, Mulholland Drive will suffer major throwback. It's too perfect, it's getting too much acclaim, naturally people will call it overrated. They will refer to the loose ends of where TV pilot ends and the film begins, they will say that "Club Silencio" is blue colored version of Black Lodge. Most of all, they will say, that the moral of the film is an obvious cliche. To all this, I can say: First of all, the only way to appreciate Lynch's film, is to have faith in him completely, to trust that he really means what he says, and in Mulholland Drive I am willing to trust him more than ever, because I do feel the love he put in every scene, even what might've seem the exploitative lesbian scene. I believe every single scene in this film. Second of all, getting back to beginning of my review, it feels right, and no amount of writing about film can change it.

Critics who sing praises to "In The Bedroom" could have been exactly the same people who gave Oscar to "How Green Was My Valley", instead of "Citizen Kane" in 1942. It's shameful, how ready they are to praise this mediocrity that doesn't take any risks, doesn't try to tackle any issues, and plays it safe all the way through the end. Hollywood executives aren't the biggest evil in the industry. Much worse are the critics who promote films like these over really daring and unuslual films, like this year's "Mulholland Drive" and "Man Who Wasn't There". I always felt that a good film should make you walk out of the theatre not really understanding everything, making your own conclusions. "In the Bedroom" is the film that I understood everything about before walking in. Everything in it, starting with plot and direction and ending with acting, is a calculated, boring, ridiculous trash. All this film tries to be is a mediocrity, and it doesn't even succeed there. Acting? Sissy Spacek is all right, but it's not a performance of a wide emotional rage and enormous difficulty. Marisa Tomei is all right, but, once again, there is nothing there. The only thing in this film deserving praise, is Tom Wilkinson, who was the best thing about "Full Monty". He carries this film on his shoulders. Director Todd Fields tries stretching the film with the long, boring, meaningless sequences, that are supposed to channel to us the emotional agony the characters go through, but it just makes the film long, boring, and meaningless. At one point, he gives su a hint, that this picture perfect family might have some underlying issues, lurking from beneath, when Spacek and Wilkinson start to accuse each other in the tragedy. But then, he cowardly withdraws. So is the whole film. It's a cowardice.

"Night Porter" is the film that is considered to be one of the greatest Italian post-war films in Europe and a piece of crap in US. Pauline Kael called this film "a gothic porn" that proves that "women can make trash just as easily as men." In fact, Cavani's controversial film is the perfect example of how differently American and European critics view the same pictures. The film is another Italian entry in Fascist decadence genre, so beloved in Italy. If Japanese view aftermath of WWII with shame and guilt, Germans with sheer nihilism, Italian's views on horrors of the war were always seen in a sexual context. "Night Porter" in a way is a follow-up to Visconti's "Damned" and Bertolucci's "Conformist". The reason that Americans hate the film so much, is that it has no redeeming social value. Really, what exactly is Cavani trying to say? That relationship between Germans and Jews during Holocaust had sado-masochistic implications? Or was it like the relationship between molesting father and a child, full of denial and love-hate? Even if Cavani is trying to make those points, film offers no explanations. The film is full of haunting, shocking images of brutality and forced sexuality. It is an exercise in showing beauty of the ugliness, or the ugliness of the beauty, or whatever. Which is not bad. "Night Porter" is all about creating a legend of fascist depravity. In real life, of course, everything was much more boring. But the film creates a right mood. Not because deep inside we were always more frightened by the sexual abuse victims of concentration camps were subjected to more than the violence. That would be too simple. But mainly because, no matter how pretentious it sounds, in our minds political depravity always goes hand in hand with sexual perversions. Your level of appreciating the film depends fully on how much you believe Cavani. Is this really how she viewed Fascism? Or did she just wanted to shock her audience, to show that despite being a woman, she has as much rights to shock viewers as Pasolini or Visconti? One thing is for certain. Everytime people see images of naked men, women, and children being sent to concentration camps, most of them feel nauseous. I guess, Cavani felt sexually excited.