Love Exposure (Shion Sono, 2008)

I’m a fan of long movies. For one, it makes you feel like you’re getting your movie moneys worth. For two, it provides the viewer with a fully engrossing experience. Which is why it’s worthwhile in our age of ‘cool’ media to occasionally devote three to five hours to a picture such as this, or say Lawrence of Arabia, Carlos, Histoire(s) du Cinema, and to watch it in one sitting.¹ Anyway, this is basically a disclaimer to say that I’m predisposed to take a shine to a nearly four hour Japanese romantic comedy (the director’s own description). You should be too though, because this picture is like five movies in one, often all at the same time. An incomplete list of elements and themes this movie includes: Jesus as pop-star, kung-fu, up-skirt photography (panchira), Kung-fu panchira, coming of age, familial trauma, cross-dressing, cults,and castration. If this picture seems—on description—to be merely a crazy grab bag of inchoate ideas. It isn’t. The characters are grounded, despite their rather extreme neuroses, in credible trauma. For all its tangents, break-neck pacing, and whiplash tonal shifts the film ends up being a serious and seriously moving exegesis of Corinthians 13. In the rather desolate landscape that is the contemporary romantic comedy; where love is equated with consumerism, divorced from any moral universe. Where sentimentality is equivalent to romance. Where shoe mad shrews fall for gym rat man-boys. Love Exposure provides hope for the future of this stagnating genre. Simultaneously, it succeeds in my least favorite genre² the cumming-of-age story (I even hated Adventureland, because my heart is two sizes too small). Love Exposure ultimately works so well because, as in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, it ties love not to grand romantic gestures (although the film contains plenty of those) but to selflessness. That to love as an adult is to take responsibility for that love. Not to revel in mutual neuroticism and shared taste in awesome bands, but to overcome selfishness in order to be with another person. Not to possess, but to see face to face. Which is work. The picture’s conclusion, while positive, provides no pat happily ever after. It portrays beginning the work of being together. The protagonists, at the end, see face to face, which makes the final romantic gesture affecting and moral. In conclusion; Stanley Cavell would dig this picture.

¹You need a break to pee, or fix another scotch? Fine, you can have that. But did you ever think that maybe you wouldn’t have to pee so much if you didn’t spend the entire movie guzzling scotch? At least do it at a natural break in the film. Gawd!

²I have prejudices and they are legion. 

Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)

When people find out I’m a movie geek, they ask what my favorite film is. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just going to say Rio Bravo. This is at once true and a lie of convenience. It’s true because it contains certain values of cinema that are dear to me and seem in danger. It has a perspective on masculinity that is still valuable (in its own way it is a film as mythic—if not more so—than Ford’s The Searchers). It is a film of totemic wisdom unadorned by sentimentality. Perhaps it will convert someone to an initiate. Lastly, why not Rio Bravo? It is a lie though because to name a single film as my favorite or even to name ten (or fifty) would be to deny the essential pluralism of cinephilia. We don’t go to films for a single type of experience. We take in films (and all art for that matter) in order to explore and deepen our understanding of life. Which is not to say that I don’t believe that there are objective categories with which to determine whether a work of art is “good.” But, rather that to name one film as the best or even my favorite would be to deny that very pluralism. The frame that we use in order to determine what is the best compounds this problem. Breathless is Jean-Luc Godard’s most important film. Although, I’m more partial to Jim McBride’s interpretation. However, McBride’s picture is not as powerful or ‘great’ as Contempt, Masculin Feminin, Week End, etc.  So while Godard’s Breathless may the most important film of the last sixty years, does that mean it’s the best.  Our understanding of greatness is also determined by numerous historical factors: availability, impact (“The first Velvet Underground album only sold ten-thousand copies but everyone who bought it formed a band.”), critical consensus, scope, ‘seriousness.’ The act of creating a canon, which is essentially the function of these lists, flattens the discourse around an entire medium. In doing so it not only denies the medium’s pluralism, but also denies a pluralist discourse, critically and artistically, around that medium. The thing is though; I love lists! I love making them. I love reading them. I’m just all about lists, categorizing, indexing, codifying, classifying, rating, evaluating, itemizing, enumerating. Lists lead us to discover something new, especially the further down one goes. Lists lead to arguments, or new avenues of thought which can be more valuable than the list itself. Most of all though, lists are fun!

With this in mind I decided to create a list of the ten greatest films of all time using Ignatiy Vishnevetsky’s method. The first time I did it I felt that I had relied too much on what is considered canonical alongside the films that I thought were the best. Or do I mean greatest? Or do I mean favorite? On this go round I just decided to do it completely off the top of my head, and imposing a time limit, and using a perpetually shifting metric that was different for each film:

1. Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
2. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001)
3. Carlito’s Way (Brian De Palma, 1993)
4. Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
5. Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard, 2004)
6. Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
7. Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch, 1989)
8. Hard Boiled (John Woo, 1992)
9. I Know Where I’m Going! (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1945)
10. The General (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926)

Hey look at that the first four pictures were made under the auspices of the movie brats. Well I couldn’t let the boomer hegemony stand so I made another set of integers and came up with another list from the same master list:

1. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
3. Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman, 1962)
4. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
5. Marriage of Maria Braun (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979)
6. Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch, 1989)
7. Holiday (George Cukor, 1938)
8. They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1949)
9. A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
10. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Adam Mckay, 2004) 

This one is more satisfying to me.  Especially since it starts with Duck Soup is followed by two grave religious dramas and finishes off with Anchorman. Neither list may reflect any kind of canon, but the second one especially strikes me as a great list.