Thoughts on "Gravity"

The only thing I knew about Gravity when we sat down in the theater was the film had elicited some strongly favorable review headlines and it was about two stranded astronauts. I didn’t even know the astronauts were played by George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. I recognized Clooney’s voice immediately, but it took about a minute of watching Bullock to recognize her (I’ve seen many more of his movies than hers- in fact I think the last movie I saw starring Sandra Bullock was probably Speed and I only saw that because I had been in Greece for awhile and wanted to watch something which had dialogue I could actually understand).  Because I knew nothing about it, I also decided to see it in 2-D, as 3-D effects usually distract and annoy me. This was a big mistake on my part. Should you see the film, and I recommend you do, definitely see it in 3-D. I’d actually like to watch it again just to see what it looks like in 3-D becuase if there was a ever film that justified it, this one is it.

[Spoiler Alert- the ending of the film is revealed in the second and discussed in the third paragraphs.]

On the surface Gravity is disaster movie on a human scale: its plot is little more than the worst-possible-case-scenario one can imagine about being an astronaut. It’s Open Water in outer space, and it’s dazzling enough in its execution to work on that level with completely satisfying results. However, Gravity’s real ambitions are allegorical and unlike summer’s dismal Elysium- an empty, big, stupid movie with pretensions to be about important things, Gravity pulls the viewer into its message with disarming subtlety until its final scene, where in what amounts to only a modest betrayal, it goes a little Hollywood. Not Spielberg-Hollywood, like when that director ruined the near-masterpiece Saving Private Ryan by sending in the cavalry to save the day in a rip-roaring display of patriotic fervor (at least that’s how I remember it- a certain Sly Wit may see it differently), but  ending of Gravity is warmer and softer than need be for a film which offers its audience some fairly large spiritual questions to chew on- even teleological ones. Or as Margarita put it, “if the movie were made in Poland she would have definitely died.”

But Bullocks’s character doesn’t die. Instead, she crawls out of the water and onto land, Earth, we assume, which despite its accurate depiction of the effects being in a zero-gravity environment, visually struck me as a believer’s exegesis on evolution.  A better ending, or at least a more agnostic one which would have aligned better with the rest of the film would have found Bullock unable to escape her spacesuit, much less the seaweed (this caused much unintentional laughter in the audience), sending a message of doubt instead of hope. Or it may be that for director Alfonso Cuarón, hope is gravity, the very thing which keeps us tethered to the real world, and to ourselves. It certainly does better at the box office.  Despite the ending, which may be a potentially false note for only some its audience, Gravity is undoubtedly one of the more satisfying major films to be released in some time.

Get out and about

The amazing Bernadette Peters

Sometimes summer can be a bit slow in these parts but there’s actually an awful lot going on this month. Now that San Francisco Opera’s summer season is over the Merola program takes over for the next couple of months with a production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia this Thursday night and Saturday afternoon, followed by Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in early August as well as concerts both indoors and out, all culminating in the Merola Grand Finale which takes place in the War Memorial Opera House. Check their site for dates and event descriptions- Merola never disappoints in delivering an abundance of talent while identifying the next generation of opera stars. 


The summer season of the San Francisco Symphony has some serious talent taking the stage of Davies in the next few weeks with Bernadette Peters, Michael Feinstein, & Jessye Norman. The pianist/topic of conversation in some quarters Valentina Lisitsa performs the 3^rd Piano Concerto on an all-Beethoven Program (Jul 18^th), Teddy Abrams conducts a program of classic all-American pieces the following night, and that most epic of classical pop crossovers, Carmina Burana returns July 30^th. 


There are numerous interesting shows taking place in the galleries at 49 Geary over the next month, including this one which looks especially brash or intriguing, depending on your aesthetic leanings. Upstart opera companies/academies are performing at Fort Mason, and the SF Silent Film Festival runs from 07/18-21, which the Symphony is complementing by presenting Cameron Carpenter performing a live accompaniment to Eisenstein’s classic Battleship Potemkin (07/27). If that’s a little too tame-sounding for you, there’s always The Matrix Live with the San Francisco Symphony (07/27). You can get $2 off the price of admission to the Silent Film Festival with the code FILMSFS. 


Also, there's the West Coast premiere of Rob Handel’s A Maze unfolds in Berkeley at Live Oak Theatre from 07/12 thru 08/04. “A dizzying, dazzling, ambitious work, Rob Handel's A MAZE interweaves a teenage girl recreating her identity after eight years held captive in a suburban basement, a pair of rock stars re-inventing themselves after a hit song, and a self-taught artist gaining a cult following for his 15,000-page comic book.” DC Theater scene said "A Maze explores the depths of our own prisons in an arresting portrait of obsession, addiction, and fear of the unknown"- on top of all that, it stars the talented and gorgeous Janis DeLucia among an especially strong cast. Tickets here.

And if that weren't enough, there are still some tickets left for what will likely be the best version of Outside Lands so far.

Catching up, looking forward... (odds and ends)

Paradise: Love

Though I’ve seen Marc-Andre Hamelin perform a couple of times in the past two years I had yet to be swayed that he was really all that, as so many claim. My opinion changed after hearing him perform with the San Francisco Symphony last month in a terrific concert which featured the pianist soloing in Ravel’s Concerto For the Left Hand as well as Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Hamelin performed with nuanced beauty and a heady authority during the Ravel and if the Rhapsody didn’t quite reach the same heights it was due to conductor David Robertson’s less than wholly convincing control over the jazz elements in the score, which resulted in a performance which sang but didn’t quite swing. The concert also featured a knockout opener of Elliot Carter’s Variations for Orchestra and closed with Ravel’s La Valse. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again- it’s inexplicable to me that Ravel is not given more respect as a composer- he was as good and often better than any of his contemporaries. During the intermission Lisa Hirsch and I had fun trying to determine the identity of the timpanist, Michael Israelievitch, who was terrific and hopefully is being considered for the seat being vacated by what-his-name.

In the second of three concerts in their inaugural season, Curious Flights celebrated the Britten Centennial with a diverse program featuring the Valinor Winds performing the Movement for Wind Sextet, the Friction Quartet with violist Jason Pyzowski performing the Phantasy in F Minor for String Quintet, tenor Brian Thorsett in a stunningly gorgeous Canticle III¸and best of all, Movements for a Clarinet Concerto- a work cobbled together from an unfinished concerto originally intended for Benny Goodman. This was performed by what was essentially a 50-odd piece pick-up orchestra featuring Curious Flights founder and prime mover Brenden Guy as the soloist, and led by Marin Symphony Music Director Alasdair Neale. Hearing this orchestra one would have never guessed they were organized for this particular concert- they sounded well-rehearsed and played at an exceptional level all around. The next program by Curious Flights, Transatlantic Crossings, will take place on October 18^th and will feature collaborations between contemporary British and Bay Area composers, performed in the concert hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Tickets ($15 GA, $10 for students) are available here. Program here.

Last weekend at The Lab in San Francisco’s Mission District, the Other Minds Festival brought Rhys Chatham to town as a warm-up of sorts for the November West Coast premiere of A Secret Rose (100 Guitars). Chatham was one six people playing electric guitars (with all amps seemingly turned up to “11”), and with a phenomenal drummer whose name a didn’t catch and a bassist who provided a booming Geezer Butler-ish bottom, they tore through an enthralling re-working of his Guitar Trio¸ renamed G3 to reflect the additional instruments. It was the most exhilarating 30 minutes of music I’ve heard all year, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store come November 17th. If you’re a local guitar player who wants to take part, contact the Other Minds Festival or apply online here- they are looking for people to participate ranging from talented amateurs to serious pros, and the rehearsal time will be minimal, but it promises to be a maximum pleasure, maybe even the event of the year.

This coming week has the SF Symphony performing lots of Stravinsky, and over at YBCA I'm really intrigued about the screenings of Ulrich Seidl's Paradise trilogy- three films under title Love, Faith, and Hope happening now through June 30th. Check their website for the full schedule, but the films are being screened sequentially so don't wait- Love only has screenings left on 06/15 & 06/16. It's not necessary to see them all, but if it turns out to be your kind of cinema it would be a shame to miss one. Note that the films are deemed provocative and controversial, raunchy and explicit- Seidl had been compared to Fassbinder by none other than John Waters. Works for me. And of course Ojai North is taking place this weekend- last night's performance was, in a word- sensational (more to come on that).

Not so Fast, certainly not Furious

Hot woman, even hotter car, going nowhere.

Lured by an inexplicably favorable review by Mick LaSalle in the SF Chronicle, I went down to my local theater to see my first Fast and Furious movie. I should have known better, because fifteen years ago I did the same thing with the execrable Buffalo 66. Thanks to LaSalle's unfathomable taste, I've now wasted a good four hours of my life and $20 I'll never get back that not even Michelle Rodriguez driving a Jensen Interceptor (my favorite car of all-time) can make up for. The movie isn't fun, fast, nor furious. It's just incredibly dumb, and not in the good way. Even the car sequences, which should be the one thing they get right, fail to excite and are CGI enhanced. Then there's the talented Dwayne Johnson, buffed to alarming, Hulking proportions, so grotesquely huge he's at least as big as Schwarzenegger was in Stay Hungry. Watching him made me queasy and fearful for his prospect of living a reasonably long life. Let's not even discuss the dialogue, plotting, or logic behind the action sequences as they are all ridiculous and poorly executed. Seriously- skip this clunker.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was a writer who really understood and appreciated the amazing and probably endless variety of experiences which could be expressed through the medium of film. Because of that understanding, he approached each movie on its own terms. My favorite review of his was for "The Devil's Rejects"- which he called "a gaudy vomitorium of a movie, violent, nauseating and really a pretty good example of its genre" in his three-star review. What I admired was how he appreciated (and respected) who the audience for the movie actually is and how he viewed it from their perspective, even if it wasn't necessarily his own.

That's the sign of a professional. That he could be entertaining and enlightening while doing it marked him as an artist in his own right. He will be fondly remembered.

The Repressed Urges of the Middle-aged Male: Its Roots and Its Consequences

The Seven Year Itch certainly isn't one of Marilyn Monroe's best films, but its appeal is pretty obvious and easily falls somewhere between 5 and 8 if one were to rank her films in some kind of qualitative order. It has some great moments and features arguably her most overtly sexual performance as the young woman (never named) who wreaks havoc in the life of a middle-aged married man (played by Tom Ewell). Monroe doesn't ever actually do anything to totally derail Ewell's life, but within an hour of meeting her he's resumed everything he just swore off- smoking, drinking, and carousing and feverishly plots a way to bed Monroe. His secret weapon in the hunt? Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto.

The "Rachmaninoff Reverie" is easily the highlight of the film. Ewell's absurd fantasy works so well because George Axelrod's script skewers male lust with a precise combination of mockery and fondness. Of course it certainly doesn't hurt that Monroe was at the apex of her bombshell years and would never be viewed (or filmed) quite the same way after Itch, since Bus Stop (her next film) proved once and for all she could really act. But even with a lesser female presence as the object of desire, the scene would still work because it's so spot on- men really do conjure up the most ridiculous fantasies when they unexpectedly encounter exceptionally good-looking women.

The other reason it works so well is because Axelrod made a perfect choice by using Rachmaninoff's concerto as the anchor of the scene, creating an amusing parody of its use in Brief Encounter a decade earlier.

In the film Ewell is home alone reading of a book entitled "The Repressed Urges of the Middle-aged Male: Its Roots and Its Consequences" when his wife calls and he steps outside during the call. After hanging up with his wife he's about to go back inside his apartment when a potted tomato plant crashes down from Monroe's balcony, nearly missing him.

His initial anger turns immediately to neighborly forgiveness once he sees Monroe's the culprit. He invites her downstairs for a drink, which she happily accepts. She just has to take her underwear out of the freezer first.

As he's getting ready for her arrival he peruses his albums, pondering out loud what to choose as the soundtrack for the great seduction that's about to unfold: "Let's see... Debussy... Ravel... Stravinsky... Stravinsky would only scare her." He let's out a little gasp, pulls a record from the collection and says, "Here's the baby, Rachmaninoff... give her the full treatment, come in like gangbusters."

He puts the album on the turntable, takes a sip of scotch, pulls a suave drag from his cigarette, and a dreamy look comes into his eyes. Looking off into somewhere only he can see, he goes on, "Good old Rachmaninoff... the second piano concerto, never misses," like he's done this a hundred times before.

As the piece begins, Ewell's dreamy look quickly morphs into a lecherous leer as he looks toward the closed front door of his apartment, and as the piano's opening chords descend into the orchestra's swirling accompaniment, an opaque Monroe descends down the stairs and through the door like a ghost. Monroe has never looked sultrier onscreen than she does here- she's palpably provocative, dressed in a skin-tight gown (tiger striped, no less), to the point where you can almost see steam rising from her. Seen on a large screen, she's perhaps best described as a disruption in the natural order of things.

Ewell is now seated at the piano dressed in a red smoking jacket, nonchalantly playing the piece, and in an affected European drool offers, "You came. I'm so glad."

Monroe writhes at the opposite end of the piano and snarls, "Rachhhhhmaninoff."

He replies "The Second Piano Concerto," as if this was the most inevitable thing in the world for him to be playing.

She looks down helplessly, avoiding his eyes, and says, "It isn't fair."

"Not fair? Why?" he replies, never missing a note.

"Every time I hear it I go to pieces."

"Ohhh?"

She approaches him and asks "May I sit next to you?"

"Please do."

She sits down next to him on the bench and turns her body toward the camera. To the audience, that is. She brings her long, dark cigarette to her mouth and inhales deeply. She sets the cigarette down and begins to caress herself.

Sorry.

Perhaps I'm getting a little carried away here. Well, no I'm not. That's exactly what happens. In the movie, I mean.

Marilyn Monroe on a subway grate in Manhattan.

This entire scene of The Seven Year Itch played through my mind in a flash as I watched Khatia Buniatishvili stride onstage at Davies Symphony Hall last week, where she was the guest soloist with the San Francisco Symphony for- yes, that's right- Rachhhhhhmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto.

Buniatishvili wore a white gown, skin-tight, with rhinestone sequins hugging every curve with cascades of something resembling mohair flowing from her thighs to the floor. Monroe would have applauded it. Monroe would have looked sensational in it. Kind of like she did at Kennedy's birthday at Madison Square Garden, and with a physique rivaling Monroe's, Buniatishvili's entrance caused my brain to fall out my skull, land somewhere on the floor, and roll under the seat in front of me. All I could really think to myself was fuuuuuck as she smiled, bowed slightly and took her seat at the bench, smiling like an ingenue.

It took me about four or five minutes to focus on the music and it was only then I realized that good old Rachmaninoff was having a rather turgid time of it in the first movement, with guest conductor Vladimir Jurowski and the orchestra out of sync with the pianist and nothing coming from the stage that would have made anyone writhe in ecstasy. Though I had a great seat where I could watch Buniatishvili's fingers on the keyboard and see her from a perfect forty-five degree angle, I found myself slightly envious of Alexander Barantschik's view.

The second movement only picked up with the contributions from the soloists of the orchestra, who rendered its lilting theme with grace, but it felt constricted and remained so through the third movement and though Buniatishvili played it with enough physical conviction to make her rise off the bench at moments, it sounded much tamer than it looked. Still, as she took her bows and the audience gave her a standing ovation, I couldn't help but think she's the sexiest woman I've ever seen on a stage. Any stage.

Khatia Buniatishvili on a red carpet in Germany.

During the intermission I stepped outside and encountered an acquaintance. We discussed what we had just seen and heard. I was more interested in the former, he the latter, but I couldn't help wondering if that was a decorous decision on his part and not reflective of his true thoughts on the matter. He was accompanied by a woman who was being accosted by a butch woman on a mission and I was trying to parse out exactly what was going on before giving up and returning inside.

I was seated next to a former rabbi and his wife, who had just returned from a European cruise. I asked him what he thought of Buniatishvili. I didn't ask his wife.

The second half of the concert featured the first North American performance of excerpts from Prokofiev's score for Sergei Eisenstein's film Ivan the Terrible, arranged by L.T. Atovmyan into a kind of mini-opera featuring two singers (mezzo-soprano Elena Zaremba and baritone Andrey Breus) and chorus. It was an exuberant performance all around- the chorus sang with boisterous precision, and the soloists not only sang it well, but seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. Zeremba was often tapping her feet and moving along to the music, and Breus wore traditional  boots and trowsers, looking somewhat ridiculous with a whip in his hand. Chekov's gun maxim should have been applied here more forcefully than it actually was during "The Oprichniks" sequence. Nevertheless, Jurowski, making his debut appearance with the orchestra, showed why his appearance was highly anticipated, providing real contrast between this part and "Swan" segment before guiding the strings and flutes through the instrumental "Anastasya" segment, which was drenched in the uniquely Russian sound.

Zeremeba conjured her best Ulrica for "The Broad Expanse of the Sea," making me realize it's been too long since she's appeared across Grove Street. "The Fall of Kazan" featured wondferul playing from the tubas (!) and cellos before culminating in a loud finish which sounds like Prokofiev doing Fasolt and Fafner in Russian. "The Glorification" featured some extremely tricky parts for the clarinets, and brought things to an end with Russia united and still standing. It was a blast, and well worth hearing.

The concert began with Scriabin's brief Reverie, which was played so wonderfully it came across as much more than the amuse bouche I expected.

Compliance

Dreama Walker in Compliance

Perception is a funny thing.

What would be your response if a stranger came up to you on the street and asked, "Would you want to watch a movie about a girl being sexually humiliated?"

What if someone you know intimately asked, "Do you want to watch a girl being sexually humiliated?"

And finally, would you willingly witness a girl being sexually humiliated? Now I'm asking you this question, directly.

Does your answer differ depending on how you perceive the question or who is asking the question?

Would your answer differ if the humiliation of the girl was used in a film, rationalized as a convenient vehicle through which other important or relevant questions about societal norms are raised?

If you answered "Yes," "Maybe," or "It depends" to the first or third question, or if your answer changes because it's "just a movie" then perhaps you may find justification for sitting through the entire length of Craig Zobel's film "Compliance."

I couldn't, and didn't.

Not because it disturbed me (I expected- even wanted it to be, disturbing), but because I didn't want to comply with what the director asks from the audience, which is essentially: "Watch this movie about a girl being sexually humiliated in the name of art." Or social commentary. Or even worse, entertainment.

I appreciate extreme cinema and admire filmmakers who are willing to push, even smash, the boundaries of what's considered acceptable. A Serbian Film, Irreversible, I Stand Alone, and Martyrs are examples of films that ask a lot of their viewers and take them to some really horrible places. I don't believe films like these are meant to be enjoyed so much as respected, discussed, and even admired (or in some cases, like Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void, simply endured). There's usually some level of artistic or social merit to be found even in the meanest exploitation, torture-porn or grind house film, however small or inconsequential, and let's admit that it's usually the latter. Even in films with no obvious artistic or social merit, there's still the undeniable entertainment value of a mean thriller like Se7en or a nasty scare like A Nightmare on Elm Street, even if it's not your cup of tea. It's unreasonable (or ignorant) to deny that cathartic pleasures and meta-commentary can be found in the Saw films, Catherine Breillat's oeuvre, or the highest-grossing torture-porn movie ever made, The Passion of the Christ. Just because you may not like it doesn't mean it isn't there.

However, there are some films without any of these qualities whatsoever. They can't be justified. They can't be rationalized. Like child pornography, they exist for no other reason other than there's a market for it. Once in awhile I get fooled into thinking a film is going to be something other than what it is. I sit down expecting to experience a thrill, or a scare, and I'm not opposed to feeling traumatized (A Serbian Film) or pummeled (Requiem for a Dream). Bring it on- I can take it. But instead of experiencing any of those reactions I'm sitting there watching the movie and slowly I start to feel like a sleazebag. Like I'm complicit in something really nasty. Complicit in creating a market for something that has no redeeming value whatsoever. That I'm actively participating in the most base human behavior possible by providing my tacit approval in agreeing to watch what is being portrayed onscreen. Only a handful of films have left me feeling this way, including The Girl Next Door (in my opinion the most reprehensible piece of trash ever filmed) and Hitchcock's masterpiece of misogyny, Frenzy.

Where's the line? I guess it's one of perception. Many consider A Serbian Film to cross the line of what's acceptable. Certainly what's portrayed in that film is vile and the fact that the audience is watching it onscreen feels beyond the pale while it's happening. But the fact that the characters in the film are caught in a web of circumstances controlled by forces greater than they can comprehend drives the film's narrative power, as it does in Martyrs. The characters are victims, to be sure, but they're not stupid, willing victims, and there's power in that kind of narrative, no matter how bleak or horrific the story or plot.

In Compliance the audience is forced to watch characters who are stupid do stupid things, and then do vile things because they're too stupid to know any better (at least in the hour I watched before bailing). During the screening I attended, someone in the audience yelled out "No one is that stupid!" and I'd have to agree. In fact, that's probably a mantra entire audiences will repeat silently to themsleves while watching the film, and perhaps the film's palpable tension comes from waiting for one of the characters, any character, to wise-up. My question is, what are you willing to watch while waiting for that moment to come, especially if there isn't the slightest inkling that it will? The sexual humiliation of a young, ignorant girl? I'm not. For me the tension was all about deciding if I wanted to continue to watch. Did I want to be complicit?

In the film, 19 year-old Becky (Dreama Walker) works the counter at a fast food restaurant managed by the harried, drab, middle-aged Sandra (Ann Dowd). Sandra gets a call from a man impersonating a police officer claiming Becky stole money from a customer's purse. He goes on to explain the police can't come over just yet because they are at Becky's house investigating her brother's drug operation, so until they get there, they need Sandra's assistance in confirming Becky has stolen the money and to detain her until they arrive. Following the cop's instructions, Sandra conducts a strip search of Becky, which yields nothing because Becky hasn't actually done anything. In fact it's obvious from the impersonator's first words his story makes little sense, but Sandra, too dim-witted and distracted to stop and question the implausibility of it all, keeps agreeing to the increasingly invasive and obviously illegal requests from the "officer" on the other end of the line. Unable to find the money Becky has stolen, Sandra summons Van, her fiance who has been drinking all night, to the restaurant to take over Becky's detainment and follow the cop's orders while she goes back to managing the restaurant on a busy Friday night. When the buzzed Van is asked by the cop to tell Becky to remove the apron she's using to cover her now naked body with he complies. And she complies, because the cop tells her it's either agree to this or spend the night in jail. The choice is hers. She chooses to comply, and keeps complying, even though every 19 year-old must know that one is innocent until proven guilty and everyone who has completed high school should have heard the phrase "unlawful search and seizure" at least once- even if only during a TV show. At the point where Van is asked by the "officer" to describe what Becky's nipples look like, and after he hesitates for only a moment before complying with this absurd request, we decided it was time to bail. How much more did we need to see? We weren't the only walk-outs, either.

Compliance claims to be "inspired by true events." That's a pretty disturbing notion when you stop to unpack that little bit of information. Whatever really happened in real-life to "inspire" this film was certainly sad, and the psychology of the people involved could be fascinating, but why use it as the basis of a dramatic film? That would take some real skill to pull off and Zobel's script doesn't have it. The real-life circumstances that exist underneath the film's story- the abuse of power, people's blind willingness to submit to authority, the mind-set of victims, the perils of inadequate management in corporations, and sexual abuse in the workplace could all make riveting subjects. But Compliance, despite whatever you read, isn't really about any of those things because the script lacks that one crucial moment when someone tries to the right thing and fails, thus making the conclusion inevitable, however disturbing. Had this been attempted by at least one character (in the first hour at least), I may have stuck around. But it's not there. Not one of the major characters ring true.

There is nothing to watch but one girl's humiliation- one step at a time and while I could watch a documentary about sexual victimization, I have no interest in seeing it dramatized for its own sake. From what I could tell that's all Compliance really offers the audience. For me, it wasn't worth sticking around another 30 minutes to see if I was wrong- I already felt slimed enough and I'm not sure that even if the moment came that far into the film it would have made any difference at that point. In fact I know it wouldn't have.

Searching for Sugar Man

Rodriguez. Know the name? Probably not, but that's about to change.

Some things are known about him. Much is not. Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore discovered Rodriguez playing in Detroit bars, and comparing him to Dylan, secured a record contract and produced his first album, Cold Fact in 1970. Coming From Reality  followed in 1971. Both were expected to do well critically and commercially, but flopped with the public. After those disappointments, what exactly became of Rodriguez is something of a mystery, though apparently he largely dropped out of the music scene, worked as a manual laborer in his native Detroit, and had a family. During this absence from the public eye, bootlegged copies of his records came to be widely disseminated in South Africa. Somehow, a Mexican-American electric folkie's music came to represent the political and cultural aspirations of Afrikaners opposed to apartheid, and though barely anything was known about Rodriguez (the country didn't even have broadcast television during this era), his music became incredibly popular.

In 1991 both records were released officially in that country. A few years later one of Rodriguez's daughters stumbled upon a website dedicated to him run by a South African fan named Steve "Sugar" Segerman, who had been trying to learn what became of the singer, now a cultural icon in that country. Contact was soon established and in 1998 Rodriguez went to South Africa for the first time for a successful tour which drew large, adoring audiences.

This is the story told in Malik Bendjelloul's documentary Searching for Sugar Man, which focuses on Segerman's search and the resulting trip to South Africa. Bendjelloul also interviews Coffey and Theodore, whose enthusiasm for Rodriguez's music remains palpable forty years later, as does their disappointment that he never reached a wider audience at home. Also interviewed are the record label executives behind the original American releases and their re-release in South Africa. In the U.S. the album was released on Sussex- a lable run by Clarence Avant which folded in the mid 70's. Avant claims to have no idea where the money from the South African sales went, though the South African label says the royalties were paid to Sussex. While Avant is pressed hard in the film to the point where his responses grow testy, his South African counterpart is largely left off the hook to answer for where all the money from an album that went platinum. The film makes it clear that Rodriguez, who has lived in the same grubby, run-down apartment for over forty years, never got any of it.

Searching for Sugar Man certainly creates an aura of mystery around Rodriguez and whets the viewer's appetite for more of his music- and for more details of his story, which never arrive. It raises a whole host of questions it never answered in the film: Where did the money go? Why did Rodriguez stop making music? Who is the mother of these daughters and what was this family like? Why does no one speak of her? What are these dark things the daughters are alluding to about their father's personality? What are his plans for the future? Who is this guy? But the fact that one wants to know more about his subject is a sign of success for the filmmaker.

Do we need to know these things in order for the film to work? No, it works well enough on the strength of Rodriguez's music, the nature of the story, and its adherence to a classic narrative arc. Bendjelloul knows what he's doing. But that internet thing, which was responsible for connecting the artist to an audience without which he would have known nothing about, poses problems, as I suspect almost everyone who sees this film is going to go online after watching it to learn more about its subject. There they will find  Bendjelloul has left out some noteworthy parts of the story. A lot of parts actually, which in retrospect make the film seem slightly disingenuous in how it presents its subject's career. Does that change the quality or merit of the film itself? I'll let you decide how you feel about that, but would strongly suggest you look up Rodriguez's career after seeing the film, and only suggest a more comprehensive approach, including the missing chapters from its subject's career, could have made a good film into a great one- and that's a cold fact.

For the most part Rodriguez's music has held up incredibly well. To coincide with the film's release, Rodriguez is about to embark on a U.S. tour, which wraps up on September 29 at Bimbo's in San Francisco. Tickets are on sale now for what could be a very intriguing show. The film's soundtrack is now available on Sony, or you can hear the original Sussex albums on MOG.

Gerhard Richter Painting

From the film "Gerhard Richter Painting"

Gerhard Richter Painting, a documentary by Corinna Belz now playing at the Roxie, is a feast for the eye and intellect, and a must-see for anyone interested in the painter's work or the creative process. For perhaps the first time ever, it really is exciting to watch paint dry- because then the viewer gets to see what happens next. Belz has given us an incredibly illuminating portrait of the man whom many the call the world's greatest living painter, how he works, and how he thinks about his art.

That's all you really need to know. See it.

From John Marcher's visit to Chicago in 2010.

The Great Flood

Film and music are natural artistic companions, though unequal ones. Music without visual accompaniment- film or another artistic medium- is easy to experience and enjoy on its own. It needs nothing else to succeed. Film is quite different: rarely does a film make an impact without some sort of sound accompanying it. The presence of sound, dialogue, or a musical score alters our perception of the images we're viewing without the viewer having to do much work.

A film's mood can be manipulated to opposite extremes simply by changing the soundtrack from one thing to another. Imagine you are watching a scene of a woman swimming in the ocean. If you hear the theme from Jaws, you know what's coming, but if what you're hearing as you watch her swimming are the cries of gulls, or the sound an outboard motor, or a delicate moment from a Mozart piano sonata, or a loud passage from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade," suddenly there are different ways to interpret the image- and the narrative- and you, the viewer, haven't done anything but watch and listen.

While the idea of having live musical accompaniment for a film presentation has been around since the early days of the medium, in recent years its become an increasingly popular kind of event for performing arts companies as a way of expanding the audience for a particular performance. If the San Francisco Symphony were to schedule an evening of all-Bernard Herrmann it would lure a certain audience, but it wouldn't be the same audience as the one that would get excited about attending a screening of Psycho with a live performance of the score by the orchestra.

I like these kinds of presentations, as film and music are both mediums I enjoy, but the more of them I attend the more I realize how difficult it is to get it "just right," and more importantly, how easy it is for such shows to go awry.

A recent example of how to do it right was the stunningly wonderful presentation by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival of Abel Gance's Napoleon, with live accompaniment by Oakland East Bay Symphony- an all day affair which more than lived up to the hype and deserved every single bit of hyperbolic praise written about it. 

On the other side of the spectrum, last weekend I attended a show presented by SFJazz which featured a live performance by a band led by guitarist Bill Frisell, accompanying a film by Bill Morrison, in a show billed as The Great Flood. On paper, a collaboration between Frisell, a musician with a deep knowledge of American music, and Morrison, a Guggenheim Fellow who has previously worked with other musicians, sounded great. In the theater, the results were surprisingly disappointing.

Oddly, though there wasn't a single lyric sung the entire night, the show was pitched as part of SFJazz's "Art of the Song" series. The film itself, comprised of little more than historical footage of the catastrophic results when the Mississippi River breached more than 140 levees in 1927, contains no narrative voice-over or dialogue- it's completely silent. The show was essentially Frissell and the band performing a soundtrack to the film onstage while it was screened above them.

The band was great- especially Ron Miles on cornet, whose playing constantly drew my attention to him and away from watching the film showing above his head. Tony Scherr on bass and drummer Kenny Wollesen made for a potent rhythm section behind Frisell's tasty playing, which ranged from hard, metallic squalls to bluegrass-inflected levity. The music was essentially instrumentals which aimed to capture or illuminate the mood of the images of each segment of the film, which each of the musicians viewed on monitors as they performed.

The visual content of the film was interesting- how could it not be given the subject? Though some of it was way too deteriorated to be useful, forcing the viewer to try to make out what was behind the damaged parts taking up most of the screen, overall this footage shot by witnesses on the scene was compelling and well-edited into coherent segments. One particularly memorable sequence showed a well-dressed couple stranded on top of a car as the water rushed by them, continually rising as they stood there helplessly. After a couple of minutes the car started to rock back and forth under the force of the water, and then suddenly they were floating away downstream and off screen, their fate never known to us.

However, unlike Bill Viola's film work for The Tristan Project, which used water imagery repeatedly to great effect, Morrison's images don't enhance a musical experience, they distract from it. Viola's images were slow, often presented in slow motion, and many of the shots were static, allowing the viewer time to interpret their relevance to the music or  to create an association with it on their own. Images of a flood, of rushing water shot by old cameras whose playback speed is already faster than what the human eye sees of the same event, moves at a pace that doesn't allow the viewer time to make associations with the music- and here is where the performance failed to create a sustained link between its musical and visual elements. The film needed to be slowed down, to include a voice-over providing dramatic context, or some songs lyrics needed to be sung to evoke something replicating the era or the event. 

One could listen to the music or watch the film- but the opportunity to experience both in a meaningful way happened only sporadically and as the unconnected performance progressed it became tedious. Seventy minutes of non-narrated historical footage is a lot to take in. Seventy minutes of music with little context, performed without the intent of building toward a climax or showcasing the music itself, quickly becomes aimless. About fifteen minutes in I realized this was going to be a long night, and I soon felt quite restless, as if water was slowly rising around me, leaving me trapped. I even considered leaving, but didn't. I must not have been the only one feeling this way, as I did observe a few walk-outs, but the performers received a standing ovation from a majority of the audience at the conclusion. 

The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)

Though I pleaded with her for three weeks in a row when it was playing locally in a theater last fall, Isabella absolutely refused to see The Human Centipede 2 with me. Since it was only playing at midnight, I never did see it on the large screen. The thought of me, a middle-aged man, attending a midnight movie by himself, especially this one, just seemed too depressing. At midnight the audience would likely be filled with drunken teenagers who just wanted to see how gross it was and most likely they would be yelling unfunny jokes at the screen through the entire thing. And I take this sort of thing seriously- I hate it when people yell out lame jokes while watching horror movies. In fact I usually loathe most of the audience at horror movies, which is why its best to see them as part of a genre festival, where the audience is comprised of serious fans, and not a bunch of goofs out on a date.


For the four of you who may not know about The Human Centipede, the first film was about a mad doctor who dreams of stitching together human beings cheek to jowl, so to speak. He succeeds, using his own "100% medically accurate" procedure, creating the title creature out of three humans. The film garnered a tremendous amount of notoriety and featured an unforgettable performance by Dieter Laser as the doctor, giving Udo Kier's performances in the Warhol/Morrisey films of the 70's a run for their money in camp nastiness.

The movie itself, written and directed. Tom Six, actually wasn't very good. In fact I thought it was kind of lame, but Laser was a lot of fun to watch and I did sit through the whole thing if for nothing else to see how it all came out in the end. It certainly wasn't as horrific as Martyrs or A Serbian Film, and if it wasn't for the mostly implied coprophagous element of the central plot point, no one would have paid much attention to it at all. At the time of its release, Stuart Gordon's 1985 film Re-Animator was much more beyond the pale with its severed-head cunnilingus scene.

But people did pay attention, and the film was even satirized on South Park (don't take that as an endorsement- the appeal of that show has always been inexplicable to me). As John Waters proved with 1972's Pink Flamingos, making a movie featuring people eating shit will get you noticed. For fans of horror, The Human Centipede became mandatory viewing- the latest movie to up the ante in the decade-long run of the genre's extreme, torture-porn wing.

And many of those fans came away disappointed- after A Serbian Film, Martyrs, and the much lesser Inside, to name a few, The Human Centipede came off as little more than a county-fair freak show to an audience that has been increasingly exposed to things they never expected to see in a film, albeit one with a nauseatingly great premise.

However, a film doesn't have to be great to become a franchise, so a sequel was announced, accompanied by a teaser trailer featuring director Six responding to his critics by telling us to "prepare for part 2, which really will be the sickest movie of all time." Notice he didn't make a claim for the scariest, nor the most disturbing- just the "sickest," featuring "the sickest bastard of all time: Martin."

How could one not want to see it after hearing that pitch? Count me in.

In his three-star review of Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects (2005), Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Here is a gaudy vomitorium of a movie, violent, nauseating and really a pretty good example of its genre. If you are a hardened horror movie fan capable of appreciating skill and wit in the service of the deliberately disgusting, "The Devil's Rejects" may exercise a certain strange charm.  If on the other hand you close your eyes if a scene gets icky, here is a movie to see with blinders on, because it starts at icky and descends relentlessly through depraved and nauseating to the embrace of road kill. 

How can I possibly give "The Devil's Rejects" a favorable review? A kind of heedless zeal transforms its horrors. The movie is not merely disgusting, but has an attitude and a subversive sense of humor. Its actors venture into camp satire, but never seem to know it's funny; their sincerity gives the jokes a kind of solemn gallows cackle. 

Ebert's take on The Devil's Rejects pretty much sums up my reaction to The Human Centipede 2, except that I would give it at least another 1/2 star, possibly even four.

And I'll quote Ebert's review again before going on:

OK, now, listen up, people. I don't want to get any e-mail messages from readers complaining that I gave the movie three stars, and so they went to it expecting to have a good time, and it was the sickest and most disgusting movie they've ever seen. My review has accurately described the movie and explained why some of you might appreciate it and most of you will not, and if you decide to go, please don't claim you were uninformed.

It should be enough to just state the film really is about a very creepy lunatic who kidnaps twelve people by hitting them over the head with a crowbar, loads them into a station wagon, and takes them to a deserted garage where he begins to assemble his own human centipede fashioned from the unlucky victims, including a pregnant woman, with tools taken from his kitchen drawer. And a lot of duct tape. And a staple gun. You really don't need to know any more than that.

Except that its a pretty damn well-made film, with an absolutely knock-out performance by Laurence R. Harvey as Martin, the heretofore undiscovered love-child of Peter Lorre and Jabba the Hutt. Shot in richly saturated black and white, it's very good looking and while the plot is obviously preposterous, there aren't any jump-the shark moments in the script. It moves with an Aristotelian flow from the first scene to the unexpected denouement, with an equal balance of moments that are so gross they are actually funny and others that actually made me say "ewww" out loud, which I think is a first.

Even though the version I watched on Netflix's streaming service was edited (the notorious barbwire masturbation/rape scene was cut, along with I don't know what else), it still feels like Six didn't pull a single punch, hell-bent to live up to the hype he promised in the trailer. Is The Human Centipede 2 the sickest commercial movie ever made? I don't know- who really cares about such distinctions once you're past puberty? Does it deliver the goods? In spades.

I have no idea what Six has planned for part 3 (yes, there will be a third and final installment), but the next time, even if I have to see it alone at midnight, I'll be there. 

Lou Harrison: A World of Music

Eva Soltes' documentary, Lou Harrison: A World of Music, is a warm, loving tribute to one of America's most original musical minds with a depth beyond most films of its kind. Often in documentaries about individuals, especially when the subject is a musician, there's a tendency with filmmakers to try create an aura of mystery or tragedy around the subject. Soltes' film has none of that- she lived across the street from Harrison for years and treats him, and his partner Bill Colvig, as real people, and as friends. That she does so without a trace of sentimentality is half the film's strength. The other half comes from her subject: Harrison's a truly unique American persona- a visionary musician who despite having suffered a breakdown that made him something of a recluse for years, he comes across as avuncular, warm, intelligent and curious. The more Soltes' camera exposes him, the more one wants to know about him. The same can be said of  Harrison's music, which runs through almost the entire film, but in wisely chosen and edited segments 

Despite the film's brief feeling (it's 90 minutes), there's a of lot territory covered- Harrison's childhood and early career in New York are given in-depth treatment, and the social/cultural contexts of his lifetime are seamlessly woven into the personal narrative, such as the tribulations undergone by friend, mentor and fellow musical visionary Henry Cowell. Soltes shows the man as well as his times, often revealed in engaging anecdotes by fellow artists including Merce Cunnigham, Terry Riley and Michael Tilson Thomas. But it's Harrison's own honesty and openness which truly make the film a small wonder- a portrait of a lone wolf, fully engaged with everything around him, and using it to create a life and art unique to his own vision.

The film opens today at the Roxie in San Francisco. Highly recommended.

The Artist

The other night I saw The Artist- the delightful film by Michel Hazanavicius about a silent film actor's inability to deal with the advent of "talkies." It's been a long time since I've enjoyed a film in a theater- not that I don't go, though I haven't gone that often in the past year, it's just that I usually let someone else pick the film and more often than not I end up seeing movies geared toward a teen audience. Even the ones I had fair expectations for (Super 8, Drive, The Tree of Life) I felt were pretty awful. I didn't choose The Artist either, though it was my second choice (mine would have been My Week with Marilyn). So I was pleased it lived up to the accolades its receiving.

Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin- a Valentino-like actor at the pinnacle of his career until the head of his studio (John Goodman in an excellent supporting turn) decides silent films are a thing of the past and cancels further production of them. Valentin's ego pushes him to make his own film, which flops. From there, he goes into a decline resembling that of Hurstwood's in the Dreiser novel Sister Carrie. There's another parallel element in the film reminiscent of Dreiser's tale- as Valentin falls, a young woman who owes her career to him becomes a superstar. Thankfully, the beautiful Berenice Bejo (a glowing performance as the ridiculously named Peppy Miller) is no Carrie Meeber, and it's her continued interest in the fading actor which saves him in the end, despite his self-sabotaging pride.

Technically the film is gorgeous, shot in a rich black and white that makes the most of current technology. There are three fantastic set pieces: the first takes place on a tremendous staircase, replicating a common element found in 20's films; the second finds Miller alone in Valentin's dressing room- one of the most romantic scenes I've seen in a long time; and finally, Valentin's nightmare of living in a "talking world" is brilliantly crafted. The Artist is also buoyed by Dujardin's flawless performance and visual credibility in the lead role. I had a harder time accepting Bejo, who little resembles a star of the era, but in the end she won me over. There are unexpected cameos throughout the film, and James Cromwell's loyal driver is another noteworthy performance.

The music by Ludovic Bource is no small part of the film's success- at times referencing Wagner and Bernard Herrmann as well as hits and film scores from the era (Waxman and Korngold are two obvious inspirations), it consciously supports the film at every moment. When Hazanavicius finally breaks the silence it comes so perfectly I almost didn't notice it.

One quibble- the dance sequence at the end, with choreography reminiscent of the best of Astaire, was ably handled by Dujardin- so expertly in fact that Bejo's lesser abilities become a distraction. That's hardly a reason not to see it- but it is the only flaw I found in an otherwise perfect film.

Blame Ken Russell

Do you ever wonder where your own particular fetishes/quirks/peccadilloes came from?  Today  I realized where mine began. It was all of those damn Ken Russell films I saw starting at the tender age of 7, when my mother took me to see "Women in Love" at the drive-in. I haven't missed many of his films since. Sex, horror, rock and roll, and classical music- there you have it- Marcher explained. Though the films were often awful, he was a true master of the indelible image. Here are a few of the tamer ones which will never leave me.

This should explain my bathroom to anyone who's ever wondered "what's with those photographs?"

Thanks for the memories, Ken (and the therapy bills).

Random notes on horror

Ten years ago I wrote a screenplay- a horror movie called The Resurrectionist. I wanted to write a movie I would actually want to go see. At the time, horror movies had fallen into the dismal state of self-parody brought about by the Scream franchise, and no one was really making the kinds of films that made me a fan of the genre to begin with: films like The Exorcist, The Omen, Rosemary's Baby, Black Christmas, Dawn of the Dead, etc. So I set to writing an old-school horror flick- which to me meant interesting characters with a heavy dose of dread and gore. There wasn't a single joke in it, though there were a few nods and winks.

This was before Saw, Hostel and House of 1000 Corpses. When I sent it out to be read, the most common response I received was "It's too dark." After hearing that a few times (and being completely broke) I got a job and later worked on a different project for a bit, called Drop, which proved to be a bit much to take on with everything else clamoring for my attention and I set that aside, too. Then came Saw, followed by the slew of 70's horror remakes, and I realized I was just a bit ahead of the curve on this one and I should make another attempt to get The Resurrectionist off the ground. It didn't happen for myriad reasons, many of which you can discern in this blog. Now that dark tide seems to have subsided a bit and horror is taking another turn, even bleaker, with movies like Martyrs, Inside and of course A Serbian Film. The bonds have been broken and the genre, at its most extreme edge has entered nihilistic territory far beyond what Wes Craven started with the original Last House on the Left (a remake of Bergmans's Virgin Spring) and Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. If you believe, as I do, that horror films only reflect the anxieties and fears of the era in which they're made (hence the many fun but empty, vapid films of the 90's), then these recent films make a lot of sense, disturbing as they are.

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time with Isabella, who's made some films of her own, and I finally gave her the script wondering what she would think of it. Her initial feedback was encouraging and got us into a discussion of the genre, where she revealed a fondness for the funny stuff, which dismayed me a bit. Don't get me wrong, there are some great classic horror movies which are extremely funny, but with the exception of Evil Dead Part II  and Re-Animator, these are only good films in my opinion, not classics.

I was half-jokingly trying to persuade her to see Human Centipede II, which she thought was a porn film, and we were having an animated discussion about it when I told her we could see the first one on Netflix via streaming and we should watch it. She declined, though she agreed to watch Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which I haven't seen since its initial release more than 20 years ago.

Revisiting Henry, what surprised me is how well it holds up. But the key elements for any great horror film are right there: interesting characters, a pervading sense of dread, and the two male leads are strong actors. I had forgotten how transgressive it was, and remains, and watching it again made me think about how the taboos so willingly smashed in A Serbian Film aren't necessarily new, they're being just pushed further out in a film that's much better executed on every other level as well (and yes, yes, I know, please don't bring up Salo as exhibit A in the "been there, done that" argument- Salo lacks interesting characters and dread- it's just a feast for fetishists).

Anyway, the gist of this is I think the time has come to start working on scripts again, beginning with a re-write of The Resurrectionist- if you have a friend at Lionsgate, can you introduce me?

On a side note, it appears Netflix has decided not to carry A Serbian Film, which has been slightly cut for its upcoming U.S. DVD release- I noticed it's recently been removed from my queue. The DVD hits store on October 25th, though you may want to think twice before viewing it. If you decide to watch it I strongly recommend not reading any reviews containing spoilers beforehand- the less you know about what you're going to see, the better- if you're willing to watch it in the first place. My review of the original version is here.

With a capital "B," and that rhymes with "P" and that stands for...

"The Music Man? Really?" asked Isabella.

"Yes, why? Do you not like The Music Man?"

"No," she replied, "I do like it. I just didn't expect you to like it- it's just another facet I have to take in."

"What's not to like?" I replied.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather see Midnight in Paris?"

"No, I'd rather see The Music Man- we have a few more weeks to see Midnight in Paris."

Later last night, during the "Marion the Librarian" scene I said, "Watch- I think the way she gets handed off to each man is simply brilliant, and I love when she tosses off her glasses." I do love it when a woman succumbs to the pleasure right in front of her- whether it's in a library or a parking lot.

When it was over she said, "You're right- this is brilliant. I've forgotten."

She reminded me of how popular Buddy Hackett was at the time, the only excuse for the one bit of miscasting in the entire film.

When it ended, we made our way back from Oakland to the City.

On the BART ride home I explained why I once had the desire to perform a one-man Macbeth or Richard II in Union Square (I never did do such a thing- I only wanted to). She found this amusing in the extreme- and inquired about how I would have killed myself. "Oh that part would have been easy," I tossed back.

Forty-five minutes later, standing on Cyril Magnin, I called the police so they could help the girl whose date couldn't get her to stand up out of her own vomit, despite what appeared to be a continuous, strenuous effort on his part. She had on unusually unflattering underwear for a woman in her twenties, as if she hadn't intended to expose them later, but now they were plainly visible to anyone passing by, as her short dress was now riding upon her substantial midriff. Another date gone horribly awry- one of thousands undoubtedly unravelling at that moment all across the West Coast after midnight. I've been there, though not exactly in the same way.

One day I may write about how I took a woman back to her apartment one night- a jazz singer I was dating at the time who had been performing earlier in the evening. Back at her apartment, she took off her shoes, her dress, and much of everything else, then excused herself to go to the bathroom. Five, maybe ten minutes later, I heard a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass. I spent the next three hours talking with the police and paramedics, trying to explain that I really had no idea why she had tried to commit suicide. I guess now I don't have to write about that- you now have the details. She survived, and currently lives with a man she calls "the world's greatest husband," though I suspect he is ignorant about some things, not the least of which is that night I'm sure, which allows him to retain the moniker.

Isabella and I stopped to order some Thai food to go, then headed to the liquor store for further provisions. Along the way we discussed drugs- how and how not to use them. Their appropriateness and the opposite. I told her about how when I was under the influence of a certain substance it took me three nights to watch "Far From Heaven" because I kept getting sidetracked by the use of color in the film to signify the emotional state of the characters and I kept rewinding certain scenes over and over again. I may have done this even if I didn't have a thing for Julianne Moore, but certainly an altered state of mind was a contributing factor.

Thankfully, because it was already late, we never made it to discussing In the Cut- another movie it took me many evenings to fully absorb.. I'll save that for another time. But have you ever wondered what it takes to go there? I think about that all the time.