"The Passion of Anna" Northwest Film Forum Nov. 20-25
There was something special about the first color films directed by the Europeans who came of age during the black and white era. Antonioni’s “Red Desert,” Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits,” Bresson’s “Une Femme Douce,” Renoir’s “The River,” Truffaut’s “Fahrenheit 451,” and ” Godard’s “A Woman is a Woman” were among the most highly anticipated, with “Red Desert” and “Juliet of the Spirits” receiving particular acclaim for their breakthrough uses of color.
“Passion of Anna” was Ingmar Bergman's second color film. After 1964's "All These Women," he returned to black and white for three films and a television drama before attempting to work with color again. Compared to the flashier work of his contemporaries, Bergman's use of color seemed rather drab and uninspired. Looking back on it today, that was clearly not the case. One needs only to imagine the film in black and white to appreciate how vital the color is to its tonal scheme.
The rich, autumnal colors of the first scenes introduce us to a Bergman we might never have known through black and white. The color gives even the wet earth a sensuality that, in previous films, was found in his characters but not his landscapes. Here, it is the natural world that is alive and the people who are dead.
The Passion of the title is not just Anna’s, but the other three characters’ as well. Both she and Eva have lost children and are now childless. Anna, who has killed her child and husband in a car accident, clings to the hypocrisy of an idealized marriage, while the audience is repeatedly reminded, via a letter to her from her husband, that their marriage was headed for an eruption of psychological and physical violence.
Eva is just a small part of her husband Elis’ general weariness, She has no identity of her own an her sense of meaninglessness makes afraid she will disappear. Even her beauty is pathetic, as it is only a shell to enclose her non-existence. Her husband, currently building a cultural center for the uncultured people of Milan, is a cynic who despises the use to which he has put his architectural talents. Andreas is even worse off, as he doesn’t seem to have any skills, and is unable to feel anything, even cynicism, toward humanity. Anna, on the other hand, suffers from an exaggerated empathy, experiencing horrifying television images as if they were direct reality.
In an early scene, the two couples have dinner and both women, when asked a direct question, react like trapped animals, suggesting that the simplest question demands an answer, the truth of which threatens to destroy the façade of polite existence.
The monochromatic interiors contrast with the natural colors of the outside world. Even the winter scenes, with their heavy blacks and whites, make the depressing shades of brown more bleak than if the movie altogether lacked color. The introduction of color into a winter scene, such as the red blood of the mutilated sheep, emphasizes the brutal effect of humanity upon the natural world.
In Anna’s central monolog, in which an idyllic recollection of her marriage ends in a graphic description of the accident, is filmed in a single take close-up of Live Ulmann’s face, making full use of color as her blue-grey eyes pierce through the shades of oranges that glow from underneath her skin. That is as close as Bergman comes, in this film, to humanism, and it is the humanity of a mortician, using his tools to make the corpse as beautiful as possible.
"Stingray Sam" November 20 NWFF with director in attendance
Cory McAbee is the only cult personality of the 21st Century who I would put in the same league as Pee Wee Herman, “Stingray Sam” his belated follow up to 2001’s “American Astronaut,” tells the story of two convicts from the planet Durango who are promised their freedom upon freeing a little girl from an all-male planet. Told in six chapters of ten minute durations, it is a slight effort that would not amount to much were it not for the expandable imagination of McAbee, who not only writes, directs, and stars, but performs the most hilarious soundtrack songs since Richard Elfman’s 1982 classic. “Forbidden Zone.” This is off-the-wall film-making at its best, with a personality that is liable to repel as many as it attracts. In a perfect world, “Stingray Sam” would go on forever, its limitless episodes preceding a renaissance of newly minted midnight movies.
"Money Driven Medicine" November 22 NWFF
Andrew Frederick’s film of Maggie Mahar’s book succeeds where Michael Moore’s “Sicko” failed. In place of placard-shouting polemics, we have a financially articulate exploration of why we are playing more and getting less for our health-care dollar. The deterioration of the doctor-patient relationship is among the many casualties in the capitalization of medicine, where the sick person has become a cash cow strapped helplessly to a bed while being poked, prodded, and persuaded by a parade of specialists to submit to treatments that may or may not be in their best interests. Frederick uses two case histories, a burn victim who nearly perished from neglect while his organs deteriorated and a father who is blatantly lied to about treatment options for his leukemia-stricken child, to emphasize the cost in human suffering when Wall Street is more important to the health-care providers than the well-being of their patients.
"William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe" Varsity Nov, 20-26
“Do I dare disturb the universe?” T.S. Eliot asked in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Profock.” William Kunstler answered in the affirmative when he defended the Chicago 7, earning him a three year jail tern for contempt of court. It was his David moment, the moment at which he stepped forth to slay Goliath. His life is told by daughters Emily and Sarah in “William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe," a documentary that plays too much like a family scrapbook and not enough like history. The big cases are all here, from the massacre at Attica State Prison to the stand-off at Wounded Knee, and beyond, to the unpopular cases including the defense of alleged rapists, cop killers, and terrorists. Sarah and Emily weren’t around for his life in prime time, and their film is in many ways an attempt to discover the man he was before he became the man they knew. The act of making the film probably taught them more than the finished film teaches us. This overview of his career doesn’t even pierce the outer skin of his cases. With the innocence or guilt of his clients treated as a question a lawyer should never ask, there is not rarely information to weigh his performance as a lawyer. But we do see the history Kunstler lived through, and the part he played in it.
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