WEEK 49
Passion - Personal Shopper
#241 - PASSION
2012; dir. Brian De Palma; starring Noomi Rapace, Rachel McAdams, Karoline Herfurth
Brian De Palma, a director I am fully in the bag for, makes entertainment about entertainment. Blow Out is a serious reckoning with this; Femme Fatale is a silly reckoning with this; Passion is so silly it’s serious, or so serious it’s silly. It’s an American take of a European take of an American take. It’s a copy of a copy of a copy and it results in something wild, idiosyncratic, human, and something that I’d be willing to guess the majority of you would watch and be like “No this is just bad, Greg, lol.”
But damn, do I just adore it! It is so artificial and its contrived seams become the point. “Style for style’s sake” is often used by critics as a pejorative, but De Palma, especially with his Passion, proves the worth of that particular mode of cinematic expression.
VERDICT: STAYS AND PLAYS
#242 - PATHS OF GLORY
1957; dir. Stanley Kubrick; starring Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou
This is a startling, infuriating, pure lightning bolt of cinema. It’s made, as you’d expect from Kubrick, with precision and clarity, with the horrors of systemic dehumanization laid bare and bold. It’s a profound work, an excoriation of so many things in a wildly efficient 88 minutes. It’s a very “American” work despite taking place in France; it’s main thesis, I think, is that an individual’s freedom is more important than a society’s demands. Sometimes I find that idea limiting and toxic, but here, good gravy does it get you fired up and antsy.
Critic Gene Siskel interviewed director François Truffaut once and asked him about violence in films. Truffaut’s response: “Some films claim to be antiwar, but I don’t think I’ve really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war.” Siskel pressed him further, asking specifically about Paths of Glory. Truffaut’s response: “I think Kubrick likes violence very much.”
Siskel later offered his own thoughts on their interview: “I have thought about Truffaut’s point for the last two weeks, and only now am I beginning to understand and agree with him. In ‘Paths of Glory,’ which so many people consider the strongest antiwar film ever made, the film doesn’t so much condemn war as the French government that thought it necessary to sacrifice its soldiers.”
With respect to the influential Siskel and Truffaut, uh, you doingos is wrong. No reasonable person will walk away from Paths of Glory thinking anything about war is good; they will only walk away with images of destruction, horror, pain, and unchecked power. Yes, the film condemns the French government - but why is it condemning them? It isn’t this narrow condemnation of this one thing; it’s a holistic scythe taken to the entirety of such systems working in lockstep to annihilate all forms of humanism. I reject Truffaut and Siskel’s myopia about this particular subject! I’m sorry!!
VERDICT: STAYS AND PLAYS
#243 - PEEPING TOM
1960; dir. Michael Powell; starring Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey
Peeping Tom is a watershed of genre cinema, a work that obviously influenced all kinds of filmmakers and horror impulses in its wake, including the aforementioned Mr. De Palma. It’s strikingly gorgeous, especially in this delicious Criterion 4K restoration. I have mad respect for it!
But unfortunately, at least to my dumb taste, it’s a bit of a dry watch. It’s like all of these raw ingredients are being presented here for the first time but the chef hasn’t quite mixed them all together in a holistically flavorful way (that’s twice holistic has been used now in this post; watch it, Greg). It’s a beautiful blueprint for so many bangers post-release, but not one I need to revisit on its own as its own thing.
VERDICT: GOES AWAY
#244 - PERFECT BLUE
1997; dir. Satoshi Kon; starring Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto, Shiho Niiyama
If Peeping Tom laid the blueprint for the rest of 20th century horror, Perfect Blue just might lay claim to all of the 21st century.
Quite explicitly, you see this flick’s reverberations in seminal genre works like Black Swan, Mulholland Dr., and the Smile franchise. More broadly, it itches at the nagging anxieties surrounding the corruptions and conflicts about identity, reality, connection, parasocial relationships, and trauma that we see in many genre films since.
In other words, Perfect Blue looked at the Internet for two seconds, said “Oh I see how this is gonna fuck us all up,” and told us pretty quickly (81 minutes, beating Paths of Glory by seven!).
It’s really fucking scary, a profound work of disquietude, slow-burn agony, and a climax that soars to unpredictable heights without offering any kind of traditional catharsis. Powerful!
VERDICT: STAYS AND PLAYS
#245 - PERSONAL SHOPPER
2016; dir. Olivier Assayas; starring Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz
Speaking of 21st century horror stories about technology, reality, and the blurring of identity…
Kristen Stewart is a phenomenal actor, and she’s doing aching, vulnerable, but nonchalant work here; endlessly watchable and egoless. The movie around her doesn’t quite do much with it, however; it felt less like a series of inevitable scenes smushing into each other and more like a bunch of tangentially related vignettes. Something wild would happen at the end of one scene, and we’d see the same character in the next scene seemingly unaffected. Maybe it’s just a style of filmmaking from this director that isn’t for me that is for other people, but it just made the whole thing too easy to check out of!
VERDICT: GOES AWAY
THE RUNNING TIME SO FAR
Total Watched: 245
Stays And Plays: 175
Goes Away: 70
Thanks for checking out Greg’s Blu-Rays A-To-Z! Next week: A lot of people stuck in very precarious situations!