Lacombe Lucien

I think the trouble with Louis Malle's Lacombe Lucien is Lucien himself. He's an awful little entitled young man who winds up working for the Nazis in the south of France. I guess I'm not sure what I was supposed to like about him. Of course, he's a stupid little boy, who doesn't have many options in life, but he knows he could do better, he just chooses the easiest, most violent path possible. Malle's film is well made, of course, but I don't think I liked it much. The film's best performance is by Holger Löwenadler, who plays the father of the woman Lucien claims he loves.

Thanksgiving in August: Rick

I met Rick in 2006 when we started as part of the same cohort in graduate school. Rick was the lone technical director in our cohort, and it was partially for this reason, I think, that we became such good friends. I am not sure if I said before what a great joy it was having a cohort in graduate school that was so close across all of our disciplines. All of us were close and remain close: lighting and costumes and scene design and management and theatre studies and directing and technical direction. This is my sixth year at this school and I have never seen a group as close as we were. Fun story about meeting Rick: Rick is, of course, just a nickname, but the first day of orientation, they passed around nametags for us all to wear. Rick had already shaken my hand and introduced himself, but when I got the nametags, I passed him his (which said Enrico) and he gave me this funny look because I clearly should not have known his name. I did, though, because, as I pointed out earlier, I had been stalking everyone before I got to school.

Our very first week of grad school, Rick invited a bunch of us over to his house for dinner and he made homemade pasta for me and Alison and Ryan. It was lovely and we met his dog and Rick and I bonded over jazz. He was playing the Miles Davis score for Elevator to the Gallows and I either recognized it or had mentioned having seen the film; I can't remember which. Rick has all kinds of things like this up his sleeve at all times: he knows films and books and reads articles like a madman, devouring culture like few people I know – and he has an opinion on all of it.

This is one of the chief ways Rick and I communicate now that he lives far away in New Jersey: he constantly shares articles with me about, say, Michael Cimino, or Werner Herzog, or – alternatively – Judith Butler. It is a delight to have someone like him in my life who is constantly reminding me to pay more attention to the world I'm in and stop being so rarefied and desk-bound.

One of my best memories of me and Rick is Thanksgiving 2007. A bunch of us grad students got together and ate until we were stuffed and we were all also fairly drunk. Rick and I, however, decided we were going to go to the movies and then left the party to go to see the late show of No Country for Old Men. When the movie was over Rick just sat there and he said "If this was playing again tonight I would just sit here and watch it again." Actually, I think we went another time to see No Country. Rick and I have been to a ton of movies together, and we also always fight about them. One of the true delights of knowing someone like Rick who sees a lot of movies is that even when he is wrong about a movie (how dare he dislike Me and You and Everyone We Know, for example! – I believe the direct quote was "twee indie rubbish") I can respect his opinion. Often I enjoy our fights about movies more than our agreements about them.

Rick is also in the frequent habit of "purging" facebook friends, a practice that I both recommend and which scares me. I also am never really scared that Rick is going to purge me. For this, I am grateful. So, this one goes out to my buddy Rick. He is not with the lord, but he is from the lord.

Noir, Neo-Noir & More Coming-of-Age

I liked Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol a lot better than I liked The Third Man (which he made a year later in 1949), and I would venture to say the reason is that I think it's a better piece of film noir than The Third Man is. Sure, The Third Man is about murder and intrigue in post-war Europe and all kinds of consulates and things like that, and The Fallen Idol is really the story of a little boy's attachment to a servant, Mr. Baines. But as I complained about before, The Third Man isn't really in black and white: it's a gray film more than anything, if you get my meaning. And though the topic of The Fallen Idol is less typically noir than you'd expect, Reed shoots entire, riveting sequences like a master of German Expressionism. The plot, too, becomes more and more gothic as the film plays on and a true villain emerges in the form of the evil Mrs. Baines.

I saw The Fallen Idol in its limited re-release down at the Rialto theatre yesterday afternoon, and though I thought the sound quality left quite a lot to be desired, the movie is great: exciting, never obvious and definitely thrilling. And because the center of the film is an irritating, unpredictable young man with good intentions to burn, one never knows what will come out of the little tyke's mouth and how much damage he can do.
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Then it was off to see Rian Johnson's debut feature Brick, about which I've already raved. I wanted to add one thing, though. I read (was it in the L. A. Times?) a review that called Brick long on style and panache but extremely short on substance. I totally disagree with this, and I don't think I would've liked the picture as much if it had been true. (I do love movies solely because of style, but there aren't too many of them.) At Brick's noir-ish center is a group of young people who don't care one solitary bit about education, but who, in a godless world, are looking for a way to become important, to make their lives matter. Brick is a portrait of often drug-addicted, always self-important youth who establish hierarchies among themselves and move in circles of their own creation. Authority is always in question and re-negotiated on a daily basis through means violent, intellectual and monetary. But the motivating purpose behind these young people, we find by the film's end, is a desire to last longer: immortality through parenthood and/or the creation of a legacy (biological or not.) It's a fabulous film, definitely long on style and panache, but also a fascinating description of America's youth.

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This morning's movie was Louis Malle's 1971 Le Souffle a Cœur (Murmur of the Heart). It was alright. Challenging, I suppose, in it's day, but more coming-of-age stuff... and to tell you the truth I'm a little burned out on that. Plus it's all about sex. Sex, sex, sex. Which is interesting, to be sure, but it's Louis Malle, so it's heterosexual sex. Which, I am bound to say, is rarely interesting to me. The film is similar in subject to last year's Ma Mère, and Murmur of the Heart is far superior to that film, though that really isn't saying much at all.

Elevator to the Gallows

Last night I went to the late screening of Ascenseur pour l'Échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows). It's Louis Malle's first film (he of Atlantic City, Dearest Heart, Lacombe Lucien, Au Revoir les Enfants and Damage). The movie was first released in the U.S. in 1961 and was re-released last Friday. I'm not sure how reviewers have talked about the film, but it's a really cool movie. It's a tense and taut and totally thrilling, with a really fascinating performance by Jeanne Moreau. Seeing Louis Malle's first film in a movie theater instead of on DVD is already pretty cool as far as I go; for me, though, the coolest thing about this movie is the score which is by... (drumroll) Miles Davis. Miles also plays on the soundtrack of course. It's awesome. I don't think it's the first time jazz was used so heavily in a film score (I've always been told that title goes to The Man with the Golden Arm, though I have yet to see it) but it is damned effective. In fact, it gives the film such a unique sound that I will recommend the film based on the score alone.

Damage

Rupert Graves is hot.
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I hit upon the concept for Shrew: the beach. Laugh all you want, but it's going to be very funny. I can see it all in my head... loads of business. And then Petruchio's house is the dead of winter for no apparent reason (except that, of course, the script explicitly says so.)