Movie Club

[pugetopolis]

May this movie discussion be a journey.

 

[Gintaras]

One of the things I find so fascinating about Vilnius are all these subtle Baroque layers.  Makes me think of old Latin American cities like Cartagena.  Latin literature and film are very popular here.  My wife's older cousin, a drama critic, has a real passion for Latin drama, spending a lot of time in Spain and traveling to Central and South America quite often.  I envy him.

I loved the scene in One Hundred Years of Solitude, where the town gets a movie theatre only to burn it down when the same actors appeared in a different movie the following week.  A disjunction between the real and the imagined that they weren't willing to accept.  I too look forward to exploring Latin film again, puget.  I haven't seen Amores Perros, barton, and will add it to my list.

[pugetopolis]

Where would you like to begin?

Gael Garcia Bernal—or another Latin film perhaps?

[Lhoffman]

I haven't seen Motorcycle Diaries.  Always meant to.  I see I can get it on instantview at Netflix.  So yes, I'd be interested in giving it a look. 

Right now I'm working through some of the work of Georges Melies who began his career in 1896.  He was a magician before he got into film and you find a sort of whimsy and magical charm in much of his work.  Also interesting to look at some of his work in light of the attitute of the French toward colonialism at that time. 

[pugetopolis]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh2GgCFR2dw&feature=related

A long slow flashback of the journey—the characters in the movie and the real people in the memoir.

[pugetopolis]

One of the things I find so fascinating about Vilnius are all these subtle Baroque layers.  Makes me think of old Latin American cities like Cartagena. 

I like that phrase “subtle Baroque layers.” It describes for me the journey the two men make down and up around the South American continent. The Norton motorcycle served them well—after being put through such a grueling road trip thru Argentina, then up thru Peru to Central America.

Two young medical students—later to become very famous. Southern hemisphere activists—their identities formed by what they saw and did. They reminded me of Roberto Bolaño—who wrote about that Latino generation and the others who took social change seriously. We had Kent State but nothing like what they went through. And they were more intellectual than us—their ministries of information not as subtle and all-pervasive as ours.

But one thing I noticed about Motorcycle Diaries was the “subtle Baroque layers” that flowed and segued into each other as the two young men drove from Argentina through Peru and up into the Caribbean. It really wasn’t one vast “American” continent down there. There were many cultural landscapes layering each other on the journey. Ancient ones like the Inca—cosmopolitan ones in the different cities.

The Motorcycle Diaries end—where another movie begins. And it’s in that movie—that we’re all moviegoers still.

[Gintaras]

I guess the biggest appeal in a movie like this is the great sense of adventure.  I've always wanted to travel through Central and South America.  Columbia, Argentina, Peru, Chile all hold a special fascination.  The spine that is the Andes mountains.  Argentina has a special call, and after seeing such a vapid movie as House of Spirits, it was so refreshing to watch Motorcycle Diaries.  You just have to wonder about a Danish director taking on a Latin American novel and filling it full of Anglo actors with Antonio Bandares as the token Latino. 

Bernal is so fresh, like Bandares was in his early Almadovar movies, even if they seem cut from slightly different clothes.  To Bernal's credit, it doesn't seem that he wants to be Anglicanized the way other Latin American actors have.  He was great in Bad Education.  I'd like to see Blindness,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP6epqu_DFc

He puts Mark Ruffalo in his place pretty quickly.

[pugetopolis]

I guess the biggest appeal in a movie like this is the great sense of adventure.  I've always wanted to travel through Central and South America.  Columbia, Argentina, Peru, Chile all hold a special fascination.  The spine that is the Andes mountains.  Argentina has a special call...

For me it was Cuba. Cuba came to me—I didn’t have to journey to it. Suddenly Cuba touched me in many ways—back then in the early ‘60s. After the Revolution. An incredible Latino influx of young men onto campus—into the dorms. That’s when Cuba became adventurous for me. How to describe it? Perhaps with a transgressive film review? A Polanski movie? How apropos—how de rigeur.

[pugetopolis]

Repulsion (1965)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO0niGPR5S4

Catherine Deneuve plays Carol Ledoux in this early Roman Polanski movie. When I first saw it back in 1965, I was repulsed by it. Especially the scene with the hands reaching out from the walls.

At the time I was going to college—living in Smegma Hall on campus. The dormitory was full of louche Latinos recently exiled from Cuba because of the Revolution. Naturally they were lonely for their girlfriends—many of them still back in Havana.

The sounds of love-sighing went on & on during the night—soon I had a few boyfriends knocking on my door late at night. Word got around that I was easy—hardly a night went by without me getting any sleep. It was a blessing and a curse—I began feeling like Carol Ledoux. Repulsion set in but I couldn’t help myself.

Too much of a good thing—makes Jack a gay boy. Naturally I was repulsed by myself and my uncouth urges—but also all the mad Cuban music and brazen Latino sexuality got on my nerves. I fell into a tortured state of mind—like poor Catherine Deneuve. I ended up doing their homework, laundry and even became their manicurist. It was the only way I could keep their hands on me—I mean off me.

I started skipping classes—I had these horrible hangovers. I became unhinged with lust—even the cheap dormitory cinderblock walls had hands reaching out for me—trying to ravish me. When I looked in the mirror, all I could see was my grotesque and hideous repulsive face. My bruised lips were puffy with Cuban love—once they got what they wanted, they’d leave my exhausted lifeless body crumpled in bed.

Thank god the university was on the semester system—that way I could postpone my studies longer and avoid the inevitable mental hospital. The cracks in the dorm walls got larger & larger—but they weren’t the only repulsive hideous thing that got cracked. I felt like Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. I’d been depending on the kindness of strangers much too long. Even Armando told me that afterwards.

These young Cubans were such Latino lonely boyz for love—they felt cheated by the Revolution. They and their families (doctors, lawyers, scientists) had to give up everything and become exiles. They fled to Florida and Louisiana—many of them ending up in my arms. I don’t know how many of them whispered their girlfriend’s name in my ear at the very end—when they were making love to me.

At night the dorm vibrated with Latino music and loud voices. The Cubans were loud—they seemed excited all the time. I suppose I would be too—if I’d lost everything. My past, my present, my future. But it was especially hard on the young—they felt cheated by what happened.

Some took their anger out on me—they were ten times worse than Marlon Brando as snarling Stanley Kowalski. I’m not going to defend Marlon Brando or Tennessee Williams or Roman Polanski. Why should I? I was the one used and abused every night—I owned stock in K-Y Inc.

Earlier I’d seen Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana (1964). I was very much infatuated with Fidelmar Duran as Pepe and Roberto Leyva as Pedro—the two kept Mexican boyz there in villa of Ava Gardner. They sang and danced around Richard Burton tied up in his hammock—who played the male hysteric again as usual. A role he was pretty good at—what a campy Hollywood drama queen.

A sympathetic lesbian line Burton makes in the movie (“Miss Fellowes is a highly moral person. If she ever recognized the truth about herself it would destroy her.”) seemed especially relevant to me. As my Latino love affairs grew more intense that year in the dorm—my self-awareness tormented and guilted me worse than any foreboding astrologic “Yod” in the heavens above. I deserved to be tied up in a hammock like Burton—instead I suffered the slings and arrows of one tragic “crush” after the next.

Pretty soon Armando moved in with me—he drove his friends away and was nice to me. He taught me some Spanish—we got an apartment on Highland Drive. He became an engineer, got married, ended up in New Orleans. After Katrina I went down to see him. He’d changed—and so had the Big Easy.

All I know is I’ve known what Carol Ledoux went through—the female sadness, alienation and sexual neurosis creeping into psychosis. I had a mild case of it. But I knew the repulsive perversions and erotic games the mind can play. The famished disturbing potency of Latino love!!!

[Gintaras]

I'll have to find a copy of Repulsion, as I have not seen it.  Maybe we can shift gears to Polanski, especially his earlier work, as there is so much to talk about cinematically.  I wouldn't mind seeing Rosemary's Baby (1968) again.  There was also Dance of the Vampires(1967) with Sharon Tate.  Haven't seen that one either.  Would also be interested in some of his early Polish movies, although they appear to be mostly shorts.

[Gintaras]

Dance of the Vampires
(aka The Fearless Vampire Killers)

Who says Vampires are no laughing matter?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SidDWfESBPQ&feature=related

Looks like good creepy fun.

[harrie]

Would also be interested in some of his (Polanski's) early Polish movies, although they appear to be mostly shorts.

Knife in the Water is feature-length and excellent.

[pugetopolis]

The Fearless Vampire Killers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkx6vJDvhw8

Alfred enters Hebert’s room. Great camp fun. Herbert the gay vampire has the hots for Alfred (Roman Polanski). This exquisite youtube clip captures the Transylvanian comedy nicely. The rest of the movie all tongue-in-cheek too.

[pugetopolis]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkyuw3zJH_8&NR=1

The Count’s charming speech on the roof. Another exquisite Polanski comedy. Much more campy than Young Frankenstein.

[pugetopolis]

Rosemary’s Baby

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwqMv_ci2jU

And then there’s always Rosemary’s Baby. With gimpy Ruth Gordon hobbling around a ghostly NYC apartment house. Brewing special infernal cocktails for poor innocent Mia. With a secret door in the closet—to a cosmopolitan witch’s coven. Another Polanski twisted comedy. Camp horror like Fearless Vampire Killers. Tell me—are all Polish directors so exquisitely sick? Talk about campy Euro-weltschmerz.