Night One: Final Recap
Posted by Chris S.
Wow. The night happily spiraled out of any control, as the Stiff-Legged Film Festival hit its largest concentration of people at one time ever...a whopping EIGHT! Someone even had to sit on the floor, and get stiff legs!
Signs of Life was still unattended, and was an appropriately slow and contemplative film for one person in a dimly lit basement apartment. Already, Herzog's films are full of his trademark indelible images....most people mention the man hypnotizing the chicken and the rotating shot of the city of 100 windmills which causes young Stroszek to begin his breakdown. But I'd also like to add the little girl who is asked to sing for the camera, and who, as she gets increasingly more nervous, twists the front of her skirt up into a tight, neurotic bunch, finally pretending not to know any more of the song. Also, the fireworks/explosions scenes are way the fuck more beautiful than that retarded bullshit Antonioni pulls at the end of "Zabriskie Point," if only because it comes from a place of emotion, rather than some bit of faux-revolutionary idiology. I love watching the sparks spiral and land perfect into the boats on the water! A lovely, truly personal film.
Precaution Against Fanatics was over before it began, and again, with no English, it didn't make much sense. I did like watching the people with horses talking, and then the little fat man with the suit walking into frame to...I don't know, contradict them or something. The Flying Doctors of East Africa, on the other hand, was almost too intense at times. The real surgery footage we see is made all the more horrific precisely because it is real...no M*A*S*H special effects, that boy in front of you is really dying, and there's nothing these doctors can do about it. At the same time, the depictions of the difficulties of educating the Africans about eye health and general hygiene is quite illuminating. Not being accustomed to drawings, and not being Western educated like their children, the adults aren't able to absorb the importance of keeping flies out of your eyes....showing a picture of an eyeball means nothing to them. Some see the sun, some see a fish.
Ah, but then the crowd gathers, and the mayhem begins. Even Dwarves Started Small, while indeed every bit the "glooooooomy" movie that the director describes it as, there is endless black humor to be found in the performances, and I think we're really just carried along by the obvious glee that the actors are having with the role. There's also that reflexive giggle that John Waters also gets...the atrocities pile up to such an extent, the only response is vaguely horrified laughter. More never-to-be-forgotten images here than I could even begin to describe. How about when the two women who killed the pig stand stock still and refuse to say how they did it? Or the endlessly circling abandoned car, which runs and runs even after the posse has completely forgotten about it? Or the car being suddenly (and quickly) dropped into a large pit in the ground without fanfare? Or the chickens eating the other dead chickens (I think this was the second or third film this evening to make prominent use of chickens!)?? And of course, the endlessly laughing presence of Pepe, who will no doubt hover in the corners of my dreams tonight. The only scene that didn't work for me is when the headmaster runs out into the forest and commands the tree to stop pointing at him. Also, I'd like to point out that....uh, I think it was Chekov that said "you never put a midget on a full-sized motorbike on stage unless you intend to use it." Herzog disobeyed that BIG TIME. A lovely and gruesome film...the final procession through the smoke of the buring plants tops off all the built-up tension and ends on the appropriate note of ritual. All the damage done was ritualistic, so it only follows that those angry little Dwarves would end in a final processional.
The abrupt change into Land of Silence and Darkness was a little hard to handle for some...I'm remembering the time some friends of mine and I rented Pink Flamingos and Dead Man in the same night. Trying to "slow down" into Dead Man after watching...well, you know....was like trying to get back from sixth gear back into first in a split second. The doc starts out a bit kitschy, with the blind-deaf reciting poems at a dinner, but the ecstacy starts to really hit about 25 minutes in, starting with the translation glove that allows newcomers to learn the elaborate "tapping on the hand of the blind-deaf person to create language" system. Looking at the glove, it looks like one of those old phrenology drawings of the human skull, archaic and scientific, but also sort of Dada. The glove has all these spirals and arrows, pointing out that the tips of each finger represent A, E, I, O, and U, and that four fingers in the middle of the palm is a "K." Then we get to a series of increasingly difficult cases, all watched over and assisted by the Angel of Mercy, Fini Straubinger, who is herself blind and deaf, though she had sight and hearing until she was 15, when she fell down the stairs ("the fall on my was so loud, the neighbors thought a gun was fire"). Going from a young boy who was afraid of putting his head underwater, we then see a woman who was not only deaf and blind, but had not spoken in years...since her mother died, she had not discovered any new way of communicating. Fini brings the simple and perfect gift of human touch back into her life, and her obvious joy radiates through even the shitty dub of this film that I have. Even more amazing is the boy who is not only blind and deaf, but appears to have Down's Syndrome. After an interminably long sequence, wherein the boy rolls around in a bedroom and does the "pbbbbbbbt!" rasperries sound, Fini comes in and begins to touch him and try to get him to communicate. "Though he may never use language, he will at least understand." She finally gives him a radio, and my God, the expression on that young man's face as he cradles the radio in his arms, putting his forehead against the side.....I swear, I wish I could say otherwise, but I'm pretty sure I have NEVER enjoyed music as much as he was enjoying the vibrations of music at that very moment. And it wasn't even Bach or Blind Faith or anything...sounded like Enoch Light or something. Already, Herzog's various obsessions are beginning to take shape...this one will obviously develop further tomorrow, with The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.
The room cleared considerably for Fata Morgana, but those of us that stayed were rewarded with a cavalcade of beauty, wonder, life, death, civilization, isolation, and heat mirages by the dozens. Oh, and about 50 sightings of those glasses from Even Dwarves Started Small! If this is a failed movie (and it SORT OF is, as much as I hate to admit it), it's probably the most beautiful and memorable failed movie of all time. The question is whether you want to invest the time in trying to untangle the completely ungainly narrative vs. the desert isolation shots vs. the shots of people holding up unusual animals vs. abandoned foundations in the desert vs. a couple playing piano and drums in what looks like a VFW hall, or whether you just want to let the pure cinematic invention just cascade over your submissive cerebrum. If you choose the latter, give yourself a gold star, because you will have more fun in this life. There's no way that describing this movie will EVER do it justice...I'll just leave it with this. The narrative, soundtrack, and myriad cuts back and forth between reused images and new beauty seems less like Downey Sr.'s Turquoise to Taos (i.e. sloppy and surreal on purpose) and more like Makavajev's W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism ("I have no idea what this means, but I think the director does, and I think it's really fucking big"). Soundtrack jumps from Third Ear Band to Bach to Blind Faith to Leonard Cohen to the aforementioned piano/drum duo, and is a vital character in the film.
If the idea of film (for some) is to take you to a different and completely self-contained existence, then tonight's fest took me far and wide enough to need two passports. Thanks for reading! Hope to see some of you again tomorrow.
Oh yeah, and the raffle winners: Tonight's second prize winner (a couple of buttons with Herzog's face on them) go to Nicole Chambers. Second prize winners get put back in the bucket for more potential wins. First prize, a copy of Signs of Life, goes to Mr. Matt Silcock, who is now out of the running for any more groovy prizes. Congratulations to you both!
Wow. The night happily spiraled out of any control, as the Stiff-Legged Film Festival hit its largest concentration of people at one time ever...a whopping EIGHT! Someone even had to sit on the floor, and get stiff legs!
Signs of Life was still unattended, and was an appropriately slow and contemplative film for one person in a dimly lit basement apartment. Already, Herzog's films are full of his trademark indelible images....most people mention the man hypnotizing the chicken and the rotating shot of the city of 100 windmills which causes young Stroszek to begin his breakdown. But I'd also like to add the little girl who is asked to sing for the camera, and who, as she gets increasingly more nervous, twists the front of her skirt up into a tight, neurotic bunch, finally pretending not to know any more of the song. Also, the fireworks/explosions scenes are way the fuck more beautiful than that retarded bullshit Antonioni pulls at the end of "Zabriskie Point," if only because it comes from a place of emotion, rather than some bit of faux-revolutionary idiology. I love watching the sparks spiral and land perfect into the boats on the water! A lovely, truly personal film.
Precaution Against Fanatics was over before it began, and again, with no English, it didn't make much sense. I did like watching the people with horses talking, and then the little fat man with the suit walking into frame to...I don't know, contradict them or something. The Flying Doctors of East Africa, on the other hand, was almost too intense at times. The real surgery footage we see is made all the more horrific precisely because it is real...no M*A*S*H special effects, that boy in front of you is really dying, and there's nothing these doctors can do about it. At the same time, the depictions of the difficulties of educating the Africans about eye health and general hygiene is quite illuminating. Not being accustomed to drawings, and not being Western educated like their children, the adults aren't able to absorb the importance of keeping flies out of your eyes....showing a picture of an eyeball means nothing to them. Some see the sun, some see a fish.
Ah, but then the crowd gathers, and the mayhem begins. Even Dwarves Started Small, while indeed every bit the "glooooooomy" movie that the director describes it as, there is endless black humor to be found in the performances, and I think we're really just carried along by the obvious glee that the actors are having with the role. There's also that reflexive giggle that John Waters also gets...the atrocities pile up to such an extent, the only response is vaguely horrified laughter. More never-to-be-forgotten images here than I could even begin to describe. How about when the two women who killed the pig stand stock still and refuse to say how they did it? Or the endlessly circling abandoned car, which runs and runs even after the posse has completely forgotten about it? Or the car being suddenly (and quickly) dropped into a large pit in the ground without fanfare? Or the chickens eating the other dead chickens (I think this was the second or third film this evening to make prominent use of chickens!)?? And of course, the endlessly laughing presence of Pepe, who will no doubt hover in the corners of my dreams tonight. The only scene that didn't work for me is when the headmaster runs out into the forest and commands the tree to stop pointing at him. Also, I'd like to point out that....uh, I think it was Chekov that said "you never put a midget on a full-sized motorbike on stage unless you intend to use it." Herzog disobeyed that BIG TIME. A lovely and gruesome film...the final procession through the smoke of the buring plants tops off all the built-up tension and ends on the appropriate note of ritual. All the damage done was ritualistic, so it only follows that those angry little Dwarves would end in a final processional.
The abrupt change into Land of Silence and Darkness was a little hard to handle for some...I'm remembering the time some friends of mine and I rented Pink Flamingos and Dead Man in the same night. Trying to "slow down" into Dead Man after watching...well, you know....was like trying to get back from sixth gear back into first in a split second. The doc starts out a bit kitschy, with the blind-deaf reciting poems at a dinner, but the ecstacy starts to really hit about 25 minutes in, starting with the translation glove that allows newcomers to learn the elaborate "tapping on the hand of the blind-deaf person to create language" system. Looking at the glove, it looks like one of those old phrenology drawings of the human skull, archaic and scientific, but also sort of Dada. The glove has all these spirals and arrows, pointing out that the tips of each finger represent A, E, I, O, and U, and that four fingers in the middle of the palm is a "K." Then we get to a series of increasingly difficult cases, all watched over and assisted by the Angel of Mercy, Fini Straubinger, who is herself blind and deaf, though she had sight and hearing until she was 15, when she fell down the stairs ("the fall on my was so loud, the neighbors thought a gun was fire"). Going from a young boy who was afraid of putting his head underwater, we then see a woman who was not only deaf and blind, but had not spoken in years...since her mother died, she had not discovered any new way of communicating. Fini brings the simple and perfect gift of human touch back into her life, and her obvious joy radiates through even the shitty dub of this film that I have. Even more amazing is the boy who is not only blind and deaf, but appears to have Down's Syndrome. After an interminably long sequence, wherein the boy rolls around in a bedroom and does the "pbbbbbbbt!" rasperries sound, Fini comes in and begins to touch him and try to get him to communicate. "Though he may never use language, he will at least understand." She finally gives him a radio, and my God, the expression on that young man's face as he cradles the radio in his arms, putting his forehead against the side.....I swear, I wish I could say otherwise, but I'm pretty sure I have NEVER enjoyed music as much as he was enjoying the vibrations of music at that very moment. And it wasn't even Bach or Blind Faith or anything...sounded like Enoch Light or something. Already, Herzog's various obsessions are beginning to take shape...this one will obviously develop further tomorrow, with The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.
The room cleared considerably for Fata Morgana, but those of us that stayed were rewarded with a cavalcade of beauty, wonder, life, death, civilization, isolation, and heat mirages by the dozens. Oh, and about 50 sightings of those glasses from Even Dwarves Started Small! If this is a failed movie (and it SORT OF is, as much as I hate to admit it), it's probably the most beautiful and memorable failed movie of all time. The question is whether you want to invest the time in trying to untangle the completely ungainly narrative vs. the desert isolation shots vs. the shots of people holding up unusual animals vs. abandoned foundations in the desert vs. a couple playing piano and drums in what looks like a VFW hall, or whether you just want to let the pure cinematic invention just cascade over your submissive cerebrum. If you choose the latter, give yourself a gold star, because you will have more fun in this life. There's no way that describing this movie will EVER do it justice...I'll just leave it with this. The narrative, soundtrack, and myriad cuts back and forth between reused images and new beauty seems less like Downey Sr.'s Turquoise to Taos (i.e. sloppy and surreal on purpose) and more like Makavajev's W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism ("I have no idea what this means, but I think the director does, and I think it's really fucking big"). Soundtrack jumps from Third Ear Band to Bach to Blind Faith to Leonard Cohen to the aforementioned piano/drum duo, and is a vital character in the film.
If the idea of film (for some) is to take you to a different and completely self-contained existence, then tonight's fest took me far and wide enough to need two passports. Thanks for reading! Hope to see some of you again tomorrow.
Oh yeah, and the raffle winners: Tonight's second prize winner (a couple of buttons with Herzog's face on them) go to Nicole Chambers. Second prize winners get put back in the bucket for more potential wins. First prize, a copy of Signs of Life, goes to Mr. Matt Silcock, who is now out of the running for any more groovy prizes. Congratulations to you both!
posted at 2:04 AM
2 Comments:
I would just like to declare the GLOOOOOOMY truth that Matt Silcock is now EXCLOOOOOODED from winning any more prei-zesss.
YAY!!! Finally, some good luck!!!
-N
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