Härligt! Jag fick precis veta att jag har fått ett litet bidrag till min film Jag kom tvåa, av Filmbasen och Film Stockholm. 15000 kronor, som ett stöd eller ett stipendium, för att slutföra min inspelning. Det var precis vad jag behövde då jag nyss haft en liten kreativ kris och svacka. Kanske för att jag fastnade i att göra en pilot för filmen, att söka just stöd för.

Joakim Blendulf på Film Stockholm peppade mig kreativt och berättade att Cassavetes spelade in sin film Shadows på två separata inspelningar. Han påminde mig om att, precis som jag själv trodde, gå tillbaka till min grundvision och hitta tillbaka till just det där jag ville undersöka från början.

Egentligen var hela grundtanken med filmen att vi bara skulle köra, rakt upp och ner. Där de begränsningar vi hade istället blev kreativa möjligheter. Till exempel spelade vi in allt i Skärmarbrink i Stockholm, där huvudkaraktären Gisela bor. Nu är det dags att dra ihop inspelning nummer två, och frossa i nya idéer och möjligheter. Jag längtar efter att träffa mitt team igen!

Gisela på Facebook. Adda!

Filmen Shadows på Wikipedia

Criança tem medo de tudo. Do escuro, do barulho, da sombra e do reflexo. Depois passa, dirão. Ou não?

Eu não era mais criança quando vi “O Bebê De Rosemary” pela primeira vez. Mas não estava nem perto de ser adulto. Atravessava aquela área nebulosa que hoje começa com um “pré” e termina com um “adolescente” já com idade pra ser gente. Antes não. Era tudo piá de bosta. Nada mais certo, penso eu.

Então, com meus sei lá quantos anos – mais de 10 e menos de 15, com certeza -, me peguei vendo o tal filme na TV, dubladão e com comerciais. E mesmo assim, dormi de luz acesa naquela noite, e por outras tantas fui deitar ainda impressionado, mas de luz apagada, que piá de bosta tem lá seu orgulho, ainda que proporcionalmente inferior ao cagaço.

Mas o que me marcou tanto assim neste filme, pra causar tanta meda?

Quase nada. Ou quase tudo. Porque “O Bebê De Rosemary” passa longe dos filmes de terror. Foge dos clichês. Não tem violinos de uma nota só tentando marcar sustos. Na verdade, nem sustos o filme tem. Nada de vultos que surgem do nada, ou gatos que despencam de caixas empilhadas bem alto nos armários. Nada disso. Você faz o terror sozinho. Ou quase. Polanski ajuda compondo o clima, ditando o ritmo, deslocando lentamente/lateralmente sua câmera para mudar de forma sutil o ponto de vista. E o incômodo vai se instalando de forma silenciosa. E sublime. Desde a canção de ninar que abre o filme. Desde o surgimento de bizarrices que, de tão pequenas, a gente releva. Mas guarda no canto do crânio. E sucedem-se suicídios e acidentes, mousses de chocolate e estupros delirantes, médicos atenciosos e vitaminas repulsivas, dores abdominais e medos ancestrais.

“O Bebê De Rosemary” é Polanski em sua melhor forma, fazendo com que todos os envolvidos com a produção também revelem as suas melhores formas e, no caso dos atores, atuações. Mia, John, Sidney, Maurice,Victoria – todos vivem o filme e a história de forma absurdamente intensa. Obviamente Ruth Gordon arrasa e merecia bem mais do que um Oscar pela composição de uma personagem tão divertida, irritante e sombria.

Se tudo isso que eu falei já era bom demais, o filme ainda tem final. E que final! Desde aquela primeira vez, ainda piá de bosta, o desfecho me arrebatou. E me assombrou. O berço negro. Os olhares “satânicos” dos convidados. O bebê que não se vê. A escolha de Rosemary. Pavor do bom e do melhor pra acompanhar a gente pro resto da vida. E influenciar uns bons pesadelos durante o percurso.

(Rosemary’s Baby – 1968) - Trailer
Direção: Roman Polanski
Roteiro: Roman Polanski (baseado no romance de Ira Levin)
Elenco: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Sidney Blackmer, Ruth Gordon, Maurice Evans, Victoria Vetri, Ralph Bellamy

La cinéphilie compulsive et la référence sublimée ne sont pas néfastes à la formalisation de longs-métrages uniques, trouvant leur légitimité d’abord en eux-mêmes plutôt qu’à travers leurs influences disséminées, que celles-ci soient directes ou non. Les critiques souvent faites au cinéma de Tarantino ne sont à cet égard qu’une tartufferie rhétorique destinée à démolir en fin de compte le seul « défaut » que lui reprochent les empêcheurs de rassembler en salles : l’unanimité suscitée auprès du public et d’une large partie des chroniqueurs sous le charme de ses tours de force (esthétiques, narratifs, spectaculaires). Une filmographie qui, débarrassée de ses citations, n’en conserverait pas moins son entière qualité – sinon plus encore.
Dans un tout autre registre, sans confiner à l’exercice citationnel tel que pratiqué par l’ami Quentin, la réalisatrice Lucile Chaufour a truffé son premier long de ces fragments référentiels chers à la mémoire des passionnés du 7e art, tout en signant un vrai et beau film sur le rock n’ roll, les hommes, les femmes, l’amour / la dépendance bafoués et la lutte des classes. Une pellicule polysémique, émotionnelle, capable de véhiculer les vraies valeurs (perverties dans la production hexagonale sous perfusion comico-mongoloïde ou dépressive, et aussi par une certaine frange hollywoodienne, Michael Bay en tête) du divertissement populaire tout en se situant dans une mouvance artistique indépendante voire underground, seule contre tous les pré-formatages et les diktats du concept prétendument « grand public ». Violent Days parle du réel avec les atours d’une vraie fiction à l’ancienne et intemporelle à la fois ; Violent Days parle de vrais gens dans leur labeur, dans leur violence des samedis soirs où l’on sort entre potes, transmués en personnages de cinéma, toutes époques non pas confondues, mais fusionnées.
En attendant de lire dans VERSUS n° 17 notre critique / analyse détaillée de cette production salvatrice pour le cinéma « français, monsieur » – et qui disparaîtra sans doute trop tôt de la programmation des salles, alors hâtez-vous – brève rencontre, en forme de portrait / propos recueillis, avec la réalisatrice des ces jours violents forcément inoubliables.

Docu & fiction
« Déontologiquement, je ne peux pas dire que j’ai fait un documentaire ».
Violent Days est un film aux frontières du genre parfois, et qui utilise une matière documentaire, des lieux, des façons de filmer, des interviews mais ce que le spectateur voit est « une remise en scène », agrémentée de captations parcellaires, des paroles de travailleurs – de cariste par exemple –, ancrées dans la réalité de leur exploitation mais aussi de leur passion totale pour le rock n’ roll – une raison de vivre, de se décloisonner du quotidien ouvrier.

Le regard de classe
Quid du travail de représentation cinématographique des classes populaires, forcément délicat, d’un côté comme de l’autre ? « Je n’aime pas l’esthétique du malheur, cette instrumentalisation de l’autre ou cette complaisance qui explore et se repaît de ce qui ne résiste pas, de ce qui souffre », précise Lucile Chaufour, dont le langage, autant hors-champ que plein cadre, via les images ou les mots (ses notes de réalisation sont un trésor d’éclairage des concepts manipulés dans le film), se révèle d’une précision inouïe, moteurs d’une rhétorique inflexible, qui sait où elle va et ne se détourne pas du sens, premier, essentiel, du message – des effets ? – qu’elle produit. « Pour moi, les plus beaux films sur le milieu ouvrier sont ceux où les personnages ne sont pas systématiquement ramenés aux a priori de classe, déshumanisés par un traitement qui les rend exotiques ou affligeants, qui les limite et les contraint aux attendus de scénaristes non concernés et peu documentés. Et puis, même si le contexte social et personnel est parfois déceptif, je préfère m’intéresser aux personnages qui, malgré leurs limites, portent en eux un désir, parfois très ténu, parfois naïf, de changement, qui interrogent, qui refusent d’admettre la brutalité du monde. »

Événements et mouvements
L’histoire que raconte Lucile Chaufour est aussi humaine, émotionnelle. Une influence importante dans ses notes de réalisation, John Cassavetes : « Pour moi, le cinéma de Cassavetes a été une autorisation formidable à faire du cinéma, j’ai découvert ses films dans les années 80, c’était une l’époque où l’esthétique léchée des films du type La Lune dans le caniveau me glaçait… Il y avait une alternative avec quelques films comme Star Suburb (La Banlieue des étoiles, Stéphane Drouot) dont l’humanité, la fragilité, le bricolage, la féerie, le désespoir résonnaient plus justement pour moi, mais je n’y trouvais pas l’élan, la vitalité que je cherchais. Et puis un ami m’a dit de venir voir un film qu’il avait programmé dans un cinéma en banlieue, c’était Husbands, non sous-titré, je n’ai pas tout compris mais ça m’a fait un bien fou : participer à ces moments intenses, désespérés, amoureux, cette façon de chercher une vérité de l’instant au risque de l’”accident” formel… je me suis dit : c’est ça que je veux ressentir… et même Meurtre d’un bookmaker chinois, qui ne m’a pas autant plu que Minnie & Moskowitz, Une Femme sous influence, Opening night… a été une leçon pour moi : expérimenter la façon dont un plan peut transformer en soi la compréhension du cinéma, en l’occurence, ce plan dans les premières minutes du film, où l’on suit Ben Gazarra dans un café. D’abord surprise, un peu critique, puis perplexe de la durée que prenait ce long plan erratique et souvent sous-exposé, j’ai de façon de plus en plus précise ressenti l’ouverture, la liberté, la légèreté qu’il inscrivait en moi : on pouvait filmer comme ça, assumer un plan à ce point fragile dans la narration, et rendre par là même accessible au spectateur, d’abord perplexe et déstabilisé, une vérité du personnage et de la situation qu’aucun dialogue n’a besoin d’expliciter. Il y a d’ailleurs une référence au film dans Violent Days ; savez-vous quelle chanson chante Ben Gazzara avant le meurtre, quand il téléphone à son club ? Celle que chante, aussi, Mr Sophistication quand Gazzara monte sur scène à la toute fin du métrage… » [J’ai triché ami lecteur, j’ai revu le film depuis l’entretien : « I Can’t Give You Anything But Love ».]

Cinéma total
Si le film de Lucile Chaufour parle si bien au spectateur, c’est sans doute parce qu’elle-même parle brillamment du cinéma. Ses références sont pointues, nombreuses, intarissables, et l’amateur éclairé, pour ne pas dire plutôt l’expert, saura retrouver dans les séquences de Violent Days des hommages aux classiques. La Notte d’Antonioni, Psychose, Les Désaxés de John Huston, Samedi soir, dimanche matin de Karel Reisz, Nashville de Robert Altman… Il n’est pas important de les repérer pour apprécier le film. Mais l’amour que Lucile Chaufour porte à ces cinématographies signifiantes et esthétiques permet d’en mesurer la portée instinctive, de capter pour de bon l’énergie communicative de cette histoire de déjante du samedi soir avant / après un concert de rock au Havre.

Propos recueillis par Stéphane LEDIEN
Violent Days > sorti en salles le 16 septembre 2009

Violent Days – Bande Annonce 1

Violent Days – Bande Annonce 2

An Interview with Ray Carney

by Diane Cherkerzian | Published May 31, 1995

Ray Carney

A cinematic Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, and Marshall McLuhan rolled into one, Ray Carney is a combination consumer advocate, media scourge, and film visionary who pulls no punches in his attacks on the American filmmaking establishment and the critics and reviewers who support it. Over the past 10 years, in a series of wide-ranging lectures and interviews, he has tirelessly crusaded for off-Hollywood films and filmmakers.

When he is not stumping for independent film, Carney is a prolific writer. He is the editor of the multi-volume Cambridge Film Classics, and the author of more than a hundred essays and eight books of his own, including the recently published “The Films of John Cassavetes” (Cambridge University Press). He is currently completing a critical history Of American independent filmmaking from 1953 to the present

I caught up with him in his office at Boston University, where he teaches courses on film and American studies. The text that follows was edited from more than eight hours of conversation on three successive afternoons.

Diane Cherkerzian (MM): Since the Academy Awards are in a couple of weeks, would you comment on the state of the art of contemporary film?

Ray Carney: Do you realize you just used the words Academy Awards and art in the same sentence? Doesn’t that feel weird? Besides being the world’s most boring TV show, the Academy Awards obviously have nothing to do with art. It’s a three hour commercial for bad movies. Actors who can’t act, writers who can’t write, and directors who can’t direct get together and give each other little trophies congratulating themselves on how wonderful they all are. Hollywood is not about art. Art isn’t made by committee or by testing different versions of something to see which one the audience responds to the best.

But that’s old news. Everybody knows the accent falls on the second word in show business. What’s inexplicable to me is that American film schools go along with the whole thing. They actually show schlock like Fatal Attraction, Alien,Thelma and Louise, and Silence of the Lambs in film courses and invite the directors to speak to their students! I may be out of touch, but I was under the impression that the university curriculum was one thing that was not supposed to be up for sale to the highest bidder.

John Cassavetes directed wife Gena Rowlands in Faces.

MM: Are you saying these films shouldn’t be screened in universities?

RC: No. Just take them out of the arts and humanities courses. Screen them in the Business School. Study how they were financed. Discuss how the casting, the writing, and the ad campaigns were coordinated. Analyze them as wildly successful marketing coups-since that’s what they are. Snake oil for the brain. And while we’re at it, let’s get the library to re-catalogue all those books about Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, and Ivan Reitman, so that they are shelved where they belong–next to the books on mass-marketing and public relations. I have no problem with that

MM: But you can’t deny that Hollywood has an uncanny ability to put its finger on America’s pulse and involve a viewer’s emotions. Movies like Forrest Gump, JFK, Fatal Attraction, andPhiladelphia obviously spoke deeply to millions of viewers. The proof is that they took in hundreds of millions at the box office.

RC: You’re just making my point-illustrating how Home Shopping Club values have replaced artistic ones. We don’t measure Picasso’s Guernica or Paul Taylor’s Esplanade by how much money they rake in their first weekend. So what if a movie is popular? The Big Mac is the most popular food in America. Norman Rockwell is the most popular painter. Does that mean the English Department should dump Shakespeare and replace him with Stephen King?

As far as emotions go, if art was just about getting our feelings worked up, an auto accident or the cry of a baby would be more important than Hamlet. It’s easy to get a viewer’s emotions involved. Make a movie about a victim-especially a fashionable one: someone dying of AIDS or rounded up by the Nazis. Only slightly subtler, make a movie about a victim of some obvious social injustice. Take an even easier route and rely on a suspense plot with constant threats of violence. Stir and serve. I’ve just described 90 percent of the movies made last year. That’s not art, it’s just playing games with our evolutionary past duping our reptilian brain-stems into pseudo fright/ flight or maternal/protective responses.

Look, I’ll admit that I have the same visceral responses everyone else does to Natural Born Killers, Reservoir Dogs, and Pulp Fiction. I squirm. I cringe. I could hardly watch the screen while the Bruce Willis character in Pulp Fiction went back to his apartment. Even a no-brainer like Speed can leave you breathless with its propulsiveness. But what does that prove? These films are the best roller-coaster rides (in the case of Tarantino, the best haunted houses) ever made. But if that’s what you want, you might as well go to an amusement park. I remember a conversation I had with a director over dinner a few years ago. He said his goal was to grab viewers by the guts with the first shot of his movie and not let them go for two hours. I asked him where he had developed such a bizarre desire. Why would he want to grab people by their guts? Why wouldn’t he prefer to touch their minds and hearts?

J. C. Wilbur in Blues for the Avatar.

MM: I take it you are not a Tarantino groupie.

RC: You’re talking to the one critic in America who isn’t ready to found a religion around him. I was willing to suspend judgment after Reservoir Dogs, but it’s perfectly obvious to me by now that he’s a lightweight. A flash-in-thepan. The Tarantino cult will disband in a few years and search for another Messiah, once he predictably fails to live up to his “early promise “—just like the David Lynch cult did

MM: Why do you feel so negatively about his work?

RC: It’s only that in three films running something like seven hours in all-he has managed not to express one interesting insight into human emotion or behavior. If it weren’t for daytime television, it might constitute some sort of record. All there is in his work is the Grand Guignol campiness, the chiller-diller suspensefulness, the kicky twists and turns of plot, and reversals of expectation. It’s not much to go on, if you are beyond the age of 18 (which, admittedly, most of his audience is not at least not emotionally).

What am I saying? Simply that his scenes are boring. All he has to keep them interesting is the pop-schlock tones and effects. There is not a single conversation in Pulp Fiction that is interesting enough to stand on its own without some comic-book effect to jazz it up. Without the harem-scarem jokiness and thriller plot, even his teenage admirers would be bored out of their minds.

MM: At least you concede that it isn’t just buckets of blood, as some mistakenly say. His work is funny.

RC: My problem with the humor is that it is too shallow. The great comic masters-Chaplin, Mike Leigh, Elaine May, Mark Rappaport know that comedy is a deadly serious form. In their works, we laugh from the shock of recognition. We see ourselves in extremely complex ways. The comedy is a way of suspending a viewer within the complexity. Tarantino never uses comedy that way. It’s always merely for a cheap laugh at some easy irony or obvious incongruity-usually a sudden change of mood. The comedy doesn’t reveal anything interesting. That’s why in Chaplin, May, Leigh, and Rappaport the comedy draws us into states of intricately multivalent sympathy with the characters, while in Tarantino, it just makes us feel superior to them. The one kind of comedy makes things more complex; the other kind, Tarantino’s, makes them simpler. Tarantino’s comedy is similar to Altman’s in this respect. It reduces and demeans, but above all it simplifies.

MM: How can you account for the critical praise that’s been heaped on him?

RC: Oh, the critics are easy to buffalo. I sometimes give my students a recipe for making a movie that New York critics will champion. First, be sure you work in a well – established genre and wedge in lots of references to other movies. Play games with narrative expectations and genre conventions at every opportunity. That always appeals to intellectual critics, who like nothing better than a movie about movies. It makes them feel important. Second, include a ton of pseudo-highbrow cultural allusions and unexplained in-jokes. Critics love it when they can feel in the know. Third, strive for the “smartest” possible tone and look: as ironic, cynical, wised-up, coy, dryly comic, and smart-alecky as you can make it. It’s important to avoid real seriousness at all costs, so that no one can accuse you of being sentimental, gushy, or caring about anything. That’s a mortal sin if you want to appeal to a highbrow critic. If it’s all a goof, like Pulp Fiction’s comic-book approach to life, no one can accuse you of being so uncool as to take yourself or your art seriously. If possible, make the story blatantly twisted, surreal, excessive, or demented in some way. Make it outrageous or kinky. If the average middlebrow viewer would be offended by it, that makes it all the more appealing to this sort of critic, since shocking the Philistine is what this conception of art is about. Finally, glaze it all with a virtuosio shooting and editing style and a certain degree of on-rush in the plot. Keep the nonsense moving right along, so no one will stop and ask embarrassing questions about what it all means. Every other interest is abandoned to keep the plot zigging and zagging-psychological consistency, narrative plausibility, emotional meaning.

M.J. Knecht in Rick Schmidt’s Blues.

It all seems pretty adolescent and Spy Magazine-ish to me, but when you’re done, you’ve got Pauline Kael’s all-time greatest hits, and the New York and Los Angeles Critics’ Circle Awards winners for the past 30 years: Bonnie and Clyde, Mickey One, Clockwork Orange, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, The Fury, Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Blue Steel, Near Dark, Blue Velvet, Heathers, Reservoir Dogs,Red Rock West, Natural Born Killers, Bad Lieutenant, King of New York, The Last Seduction, Pulp Fiction. I probably left a few out.

MM: Tarantino aside, aren’t you being blatantly unfair to other serious movies? They aren’t merely roller-coaster rides. People think when they watch them. They make complex moral judgments. They learn things. With films likeJFK, Malcolm X, and Quiz Show, they are forced to reevaluate historical events.

RC: These movies are to thinking what sound bites are to political debate. How much real thinking do we do in the course of any of the ones you have named? Lee and Stone and Redford don’t change anyone’s mind about anything. They don’t twist our brains into knots. On the contrary, they make things easy to understand, easier than life–or real art ever does.

The lighting, the music, the acting, the narrative events keep a viewer in the clear about what he is supposed to know and feel in every shot. You are not actually allowed to think on your own, trusted to draw your own conclusions, for a minute. All there is button-pushing: idea number one, number two, number three. Of course, it goes without saying that if you are told what to think, you are not really thinking at all. Thinking is an active state, not a passive one.

Maybe I’m just slow or something, but in the presence of a real work of art-a poem, a painting, a ballet-I’m never able to understand things in the Stone or Lee way. I’m uncertain exactly how to feel. I have contradictory responses. The experiences a work of art offers are not simple or easy. They’re hard and challenging. You have to wrestle with something that won’t come clear for a long time-that won’t ever come as clear as these movies do. You have to do a lot of work.

MM: What about a really serious movie like Schindler’s List? Certainly it forces people to work through difficult material.

RC: I’m afraid I can’t see much difference between Spielberg’s serious movie and his boy’s book movies. Schindler’s List depends on Spielberg’s inflatable, one-size-fits-all myth about how a clever, resourceful character can outsmart a system. Is that what the meaning of the Holocaust boils down to-Indiana Schindler versus the Gestapo of Doom? That’s what Spielberg’s entire world-view amounts to, as far as I can tell.

Stylistically, it’s the same old comic-book sense of life: Schindler’s List depends on the same formulaic responses to formulaic characters and situations that Jaws did. We live in a culture of mass-production and one of the products we manufacture the best is synthetic emotions and experiences. The Hollywood studios are brilliant at massproducing stock feelings. They have perfected the art of canning them.

MM: I’m not sure I understand what you mean. How can you call an experience or a feeling synthetic?

RC: Velveeta-experiences are everywhere. It’s done all the time in the human-interest stories on the evening news or in the newspaper. Wall-to-wall fake feelings. Or look at what happened during the Gulf War. A whole nation was worked into a frenzy of pseudo-emotions. In fact, I sometimes think that Americans’ obsession with live television-the IranContra hearings or OJ’s Bronco going down the freeway – is a reflection of how starved we are for real experiences. At 0J’s trial, there is at least the possibility of some reality breaking through-of something unscripted and unplanned happening. The hope is that, if only for a second, something truly real will be visible.

MM: What does this have to do with film?

RC: Well, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg, and most Hollywood directors are masters at plugging into the emotional fad of the moment. They whip up the same sort of instant, artificial emotions that the Super Bowl does.Schindler’s List, Malcolm X, and JFK cycle the viewer through a series of predictable, cliched, plastic feelings. But it’s all just a bad simulation of real experiences and emotions. Virtual unreality. The ideas are prefabricated, the experiences are formulaic, and the emotions are superficial. Which is why it’s all forgotten a few hours later.

The superficiality of the experience is in fact what many viewers love about Hollywood movies. They take you on a ride. You climb into them, turn on the Cruise Control, and sit back. Not only are events, characters, and conflicts entirely predictable (most movies are their trailers), but there is nothing really at stake for anyone-actor, director, or viewer-in any of it. It’s like a roller-coaster ride in this sense too-a few pre-programmed thrills and chills and then all is well. When it is over, you leave the theater and go home untouched by any of it. Anything that has happened has taken place entirely on the surface. That’s what Antonioni meant when he said Hollywood was being nowhere, talking to no one, about nothing. It all takes place on a fantasy island. It’s all “as if.” There’s no real danger or threat in any of it.

MM: What does that mean? How can a movie really be dangerous?

RC: John Cassavetes did it with every movie he made-which is why he got into trouble with critics. His movies get under your skin. They assault and batter you. His hell isn’t reserved for other people. Cassavetes puts us on screen and forces us to come to grips with what we are. It is too easy to put the blame on someone else. Husbands and A Woman Under the Influence won’t let us locate the stupidity or cruelty somewhere else. They have neither heroes nor villains, but only in-between characters, because that’s what we are.

Spielberg could have done it with Schindler’s List if he had dared to make a movie sympathetic to the SS. You may smile, but I’m not joking. How about a movie that deeply, compassionately entered into the German point of view in order to reveal how regular people with wives and children could be drawn into committing such horrors? How about a movie that showed that, at least potentially, we are them? A film that didn’t locate the bad guys in an emotional galaxy far away? Of course, Spielberg could never make that film even if he tried to, because it would require too much insight on his part. And if he did make it, it would certainly not get Academy Awards-because it would not merely cycle through Good Housekeeping approved responses. It would make viewers really have to think. And thinking, real thinking, is always dangerous. They might be forced to realize things about themselves that they would rather avoid. They just might be made to squirm a little.

MM: Why don’t viewers detect the falsittes you are describing?

RC: Sometimes they do. Maybe it’s a matter of knowledge. Even the most untutored viewers detect the phoniness, the formulaic packaging when a film is close enough to their lives that they can compare it with something they know’ That’s why Reality Bites bit the dust at the box office. The teens it was supposed to appeal to were precisely the group that most sniffed out its fraudulence. It’s also why most Hollywood directors have the good sense to make characters sufficiently different from their viewers’ ordinary experience that the viewer suspends disbelief. The Crying Game worked because most audiences had no experience of its gay milieu. Inform yourself by viewing Gregg Araki’s Three Lonely People in the Night or All Fucked Up, and The Crying Game becomes almost as cartoonish as Fatal Attraction.

MM: Do you think people would prefer the Araki movies if they saw them?

RC: Unfortunately, no. I have no illusions that Araki will ever be as well-known as Tarantino or Stone. People prefer artistic tricks to true discoveries. Truth is messier and more complex than a gimmick. Flash is preferred to real insight because flash gives the illusion of insight without requiring the actual effort of learning anything new. It’s a fact of psychic life that our ideas and emotions are organized to resist fundamental change. Real art is always going to be resisted, because its experiences will never neatly fit into pre-existing categories. It makes us work. We can’t just sit back and take it in. We have to wake up and scramble.

Art doesn’t give us pre-cooked, pre-digested experiences, but raw, rough, unclassifiable ones. In fact, if you can say what emotions you feel while you watch a film, you probably aren’t having an emotional experience in the way I mean. Real emotions defy verbal summaries. And they leave us more confused than analytic. Thinking in a new way is more likely to bewilder than to enlighten us, at least at first. If an experience is truly original, it puts us in places we’ve never been before and may not want to be. To paraphrase Mick Jagger: art gives us not what we want, but what we need.

MM: Is that your definition of art?

RC: Well, art does lots of things in lots of different ways, but one of the things it can do is to point a way out of some of the traps of received forms of thinking and feeling. Every artist makes a fresh effort of awareness. He offers new forms of caring. He can point out the processed emotions and canned understandings that deceive us. He can reveal the emotional lies that ensnare us. He can help us to new and potentially revolutionary understandings of our lives.

MM: Can you give a positive example of how a film can do that?

RC: Sure. It’s more fun to praise than to criticize, anyway. The only problem is that Hollywood has such a hammer-lock on our imaginations that the major works of film art are still largely unknown-even to most film professors.

John Cassavetes’s Faces is an example of a film that simply leaves behind most of the ways other movies organize and present experience, as if Hollywood had never existed. At a stylistic level, it literally shows us life in a new way – ignoring all of those old cliches about how scenes should be shot and edited: all that stuff about using intercut shot/ reverse-shot close-ups for conversations; star-system hierarchies of importance for actors; melodramatic conflicts and confrontations between the characters to generate drama; and the reliance on an action-centered plot to keep the whole thing zooming right along

At the level of experience, Cassavetes shreds most of the myths that American life and film are organized around: the worship of personal glamour and power; the myth that outward actions and the belief that we prove ourselves by competing with each other. That’s what it means for a film to reject old formulas, cliches, and myths and present new forms of understanding in their place.

MM: But Cassavetes is a depressing filmmaker. Many viewers walk out of his movies. Does something have to feel bad for it to be good?

RC: You know why people leave his movies? Because they won’t simplify the experiences they offer and tell viewers what they are supposed to know and feel every second. They force us to come to grips with experiences that we have to work to understand. In short, he’s not Altman. He doesn’t offer easy ironies or intellectual shortcuts to knowledge. He doesn’t flatter us and allow us to feel superior to his characters and events. His work is depressing only if you refuse to give up your old ways of understanding. It’s frustrating only if you refuse to learn from it. His truths seem fierce, only because we resist them so fiercely. Otherwise, his work is a joyous, spiritually exultant viewing experience-because it opens the door to the discovery of new truths about ourselves.

MM: How does the assaultiveness and intensity of Faces differ from the shock value of Tarantino’s work? Aren’t both filmmakers using what you called “tricks” or “gimmicks to hold our attention?

RC: It’s a trick if it is there simply to stoke up the drama, to chum our emotions, to grab and hold us. It’s not a trick if it’s in the service of a profound insight. It’s not a trick if it opens up new understandings. Cassavetes is not interested in shocking, but in enlightening us. We feel the shock because we register the insight. In Tarantino, there’s nothing but the shock itself.

If you want a crash course on the difference between gimmicks and revelations, watch Pulp Fiction and Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky on successive nights. May creates characters who have a superficial similarity to Tarantino’s in their guttersnipe jitteriness, and scenes that similarly defeat our expectations, but she does it not to astonish us, but in the service of showing us astonishing things about ourselves. She’s not playing with genre conventions. She doesn’t use narrative surprises or shifts of tone to hold our interest. She doesn’t use gore to scare us. She gives us a scary, wonderful, shifting conception of who we are. She imagines experience as having a mercuriality, onwardness, and open-endedness that is exhilarating and terrifying. Like Tarantino’s, May’s scenes can be both shocking and screamingly funny, but the difference is that in May these extremes of feeling are almost accidental side-effects of the insights her work provides. In Tarantino, the shocks and the jokes are ends in themselves. They reveal nothing. They are all there is.

Mikey and Nicky shows us what great art does. It gives us new ways of knowing. It gives us new emotions, new brains and hearts, new eyes and ears. It blows our old, tired selves away and makes us, at least for a while, newborn, in a new world. MM

Ray Carney is Professor of Film and American Studies at Boston University and the author of more than fifteen books on film and other art, including the critically acclaimed Cassavetes on Cassavetes and The Films of Mike Leigh. He runs a web site devoted to independent film and other art at http://www.Cassavetes.com

watch online for free

A Woman Under the Influence

at  www.artmovies.tk

A Woman Under the Influence is a 1974 American drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes. It focuses on a woman whose psychotic behavior leads her confused husband to commit her for psychiatric treatment, leaving the family even more dysfunctional than before.

In 1990, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”, one of the first fifty films to be so honored.

The world premier screening of the restored print was held at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco on April 26, 2009 as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. Gena Rowlands was in attendance and spoke briefly.

The restoration was done by the UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by Gucci and The Film Foundation.

Plot

Los Angeles housewife and mother Mabel Longhetti loves her construction worker husband Nick and desperately wants to please him, but the strange mannerisms and increasingly odd behavior she displays while in the company of others has him concerned. Convinced she has become a threat to herself and others, he reluctantly commits her to an institution, where she undergoes treatment for six months. Left alone with his three children, Nick proves to be neither wiser nor better than his wife in the way he relates to and interacts with them or accepts the role society expects him to play.

[edit] Production

John Cassavetes was inspired to write A Woman Under the Influence when wife Gena Rowlands expressed a desire to appear in a play about the difficulties faced by contemporary women. His completed script was so intense and emotional she knew she would be unable to perform it eight times a week, so he decided to adapt it for the screen. When he tried to raise funding for the project, he was told, “No one wants to see a crazy, middle-aged dame.”^[1]

Lacking studio financing, Cassavetes mortgaged his house and borrowed from family and friends, one of whom was Peter Falk, who liked the screenplay so much he invested $500,000 in the project.^[1] The crew consisted of professionals and students from the American Film Institute, where Cassavetes was serving as the first “filmmaker in residence” at their Center for Advanced Film Studies. Working with a limited budget forced him to shoot scenes in a real house near Hollywood Boulevard, and Rowlands was responsible for her own hairstyling and makeup.^[1]

Upon completion of the film, Cassavetes was unable to find a distributor, so he personally called theater owners and asked them to run the film. According to college student Jeff Lipsky, who was hired to help distribute the film, “It was the first time in the history of motion pictures that an independent film was distributed without the use of a nationwide system of sub-distributors.” It was booked into art houses and shown on college campuses, where Cassavetes and Falk discussed it with the audience.^[1] It was shown at the San Sebastián Film Festival, where Rowlands was named Best Actress and Cassavetes won the Silver Shell Award for Best Director, and the New York Film Festival, where it captured the attention of film critics like Rex Reed. When Richard Dreyfuss appeared on The Mike Douglas Show with Peter Falk, he described the film as “the most incredible, disturbing, scary, brilliant, dark, sad, depressing movie” and added, “I went crazy. I went home and vomited,” which prompted curious audiences to seek out the film capable of making Dreyfuss ill.^[1]

[edit] Cast

• Gena Rowlands ….. Mabel Longhetti
• Peter Falk ….. Nick Longhetti
• Fred Draper ….. George Mortensen
• Lady Rowlands ….. Martha Mortensen
• Katherine Cassavetes ….. Margaret Longhetti
• Matthew Laborteaux ….. Angelo Longhetti
• Matthew Cassel ….. Tony Longhetti
• Christina Grisanti ….. Maria Longhetti

[edit] Critical reception

Nora Sayre of the New York Times observed, “Miss Rowlands unleashes an extraordinary characterization . . . The actresses’ style of performing sometimes shows a kinship with that of the early Kim Stanley or the recent Joanne Woodward, but the notes of desperation are emphatically her own . . . Peter Falk gives a rousing performance . . . and the children are very well directed. But the movie didn’t need to be 2 hours and 35 minutes long: there’s too much small talk, which doesn’t really reveal character. Still, the most frightening scenes are extremely compelling, and this is a thoughtful film that does prompt serious discussion.”^[2]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film four out of four stars and called it “terribly complicated, involved and fascinating – a revelation.” He added, “The characters are larger than life (although not less convincing because of that), and their loves and rages, their fights and moments of tenderness, exist at exhausting levels of emotion . . . Cassavetes is strongest as a writer and filmmaker at creating specific characters and then sticking with them through long, painful, uncompromising scenes until we know them well enough to read them, to predict what they’ll do next and even to begin to understand why.”^[3]

Time Out London said, “The brilliance of the film lies in its sympathetic and humorous exposure of social structure. Rowlands unfortunately overdoes the manic psychosis at times, and lapses into a melodramatic style which is unconvincing and unsympathetic; but Falk is persuasively insane as the husband; and the result is an astonishing, compulsive film, directed with a crackling energy.”^[4]

TV Guide rated the film four out of four stars, calling it “tough-minded” and “moving” and “an insightful essay on sexual politics.”^[5]

one of my favorite love stories, and it takes place in new york and paris! i especially love parker’s wardrobe and her quirky layered necklaces. zoe cassavetes wrote and directed broken english starring parker posey and melvil poupaud.

« On a maintenant des films qui sont des pousseurs de boutons, on pousse les boutons idoines et les larmes se mettent à couler, comme les chiens de Pavlov. […] ce n’est pas de l’art. Je suppose qu’on appelle ça du divertissement ou une sorte de mécanique. » Dans ses entretiens avec Serge Grünberg (citation reprise dans notre dossier consacré au réalisateur dans VERSUS n° 8), David Cronenberg disait tout de l’excès des effets larmoyants, véritable abus émotionnel au sein de certaines productions hollywoodiennes contemporaines. S’il avait alors vu Ma vie pour la tienne, il l’aurait probablement érigé en art lacrymal majeur. Nick Cassavetes excelle dans ce domaine ; après un dramatique donc oscarisable (et oscarisé) John Q., le bonhommee renoue avec le thème médical fouteur de glandes ultime : un enfant est malade, un enfant va mourir si vous ne faites rien. Vous, c’est-à-dire le spectateur qui devez comprendre que l’heure est grave, qu’il vous faut arrêter de visionner égoïstement des films confortablement installé dans cet opulent fauteuil et, puisque votre vie est sans doute meilleure que celle de cette gamine de fiction (mais atteinte d’une leucémie tellement réaliste, tellement réelle), vous allez pleurer bien comme il faut, on vous le garantit, et ça vous fera les pieds. On exagère à peine l’intention du réalisateur qui n’a décidément pas le talent de son père ; et quoiqu’il n’en veuille pas spécialement à notre bien-être, il adore manipuler nos sentiments, notre sensibilité forcément émoussée face à un tel sujet, et tire les ficelles avec une minablerie si évidente qu’elle signifie que si vous n’éprouvez rien face à ce spectacle écœurant de bonsentimentalisme apitoyé, alors vous êtes sans cœur.

Adapté d’un best-seller (My Sister’s keeper, titre aussi du film en VO) de la romancière Jodi Picoult, Ma vie pour la tienne raconte comment la jeune Anna (Abigail Breslin, épatante), qui sait qu’elle a été génétiquement conçue pour être donneuse compatible et régulière auprès de sa sœur atteinte d’une leucémie, attaque en justice ses parents pour défendre le droit de disposer de son corps comme elle l’entend. L’événement déclenche une crise – d’affection, de confiance – au sein du cercle familial, mais révèle aussi au final une vérité que seule la mère, interprétée par Cameron Diaz, n’était pas disposée à voir.
Fausse alerte donc malgré un point de départ instaurant une narration dynamique, musclée par un véritable cas de conscience : Ma vie pour la tienne passe complètement à côté des questions intéressantes qu’il pose au niveau bioéthique. À l’heure où l’on évoque la reproduction ou le clonage de cellules et d’organes – voire d’individus – de rechange en cas de besoin après accident ou maladie, le postulat qu’on peut qualifier de science-fictionnel a le mérite de faire monter la pression thématique, de happer notre conscience et de la faire travailler sur ce point, le dilemme d’Anna pouvant à lui seul nourrir un passionnant petit film de « cause défendue », entre scènes de procès techniquement bien menées et joli portrait d’une famille modèle que la maladie ronge de l’intérieur.

Cassavetes a tous les outils en main, la photographie de Caleb Deschanel, une équipe de production rigoureuse, un casting de qualité (la toujours très juste et charismatique Joan Cusack, sœur de John, ici en Juge affectée par la disparition de sa fille) mais rien n’y fait : il gaspille le talent lumineux des uns pour faire traîner en longueur une scène de fragile bonheur familial sur la plage, véritable carte postale dégoulinante de démagogie, et l’énergie dramatique des autres pour des séquences maladives de l’adolescente Kate appelant désespérément à la compassion du spectateur, lequel est pris en otage par ces visuels vulgairement bouleversants (Kate vomit du sang, Kate est pâle et a le crâne rasé, etc.). Quelques images ou concepts sortent du lot : le personnage de Cameron Diaz se rasant la tête par solidarité, Alec Baldwin en avocat a priori opportuniste mais touchant et visant juste, et la participation de Thomas Dekker, le John Connor de la série Terminator : Les Chroniques de Sarah Connor, en petit ami de Kate lui aussi atteint par la maladie et pourtant synonyme d’amour, donc de vie. C’est peu et quand les lumières se rallument et que tous les mouchoirs sont de sortie, on se dit que Cronenberg avait bien raison de parler de mécanique. Soit l’inverse de « l’organique » induit par un tel sujet.

Stéphane Ledien

> Sortie en salles le 9 septembre 2009

Contains massive spoilers! Do not read if you haven’t seen the film!

There’s more to Quentin Tarantino’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS than meets the eye. If you were hoping to see KELLEY’S HEROES, THE DIRTY DOZEN, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE or even a remake of the original THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, this film probably left you feeling like Tarantino missed some crucial elements of the Men On A Mission/War genre.

In fact, Tarantino, who has exhibited his love of film and genre-filmmaking time and again, has bumped himself up a notch here and twisted our expectations to make a film that is both artistically and historically subversive.

But let me start with a brief introduction to Tarantino and my reactions to his earlier films. While I loved RESERVOIR DOGS and its character-driven approach to the Heist Gone Wrong genre, I found PULP FICTION (Tarantino’s most commercially popular film) to be rather slight. It was cinematically fun and contained moments of truly witty, well-written dialogue, but at the end of the day the film left me feeling empty. And while JACKIE BROWN was entertaining and gave us a chance to see some sorely missed faces return to the big screen, the film didn’t knock me out, though I did appreciate it. The KILL BILL movies I found to be terrific. Not deep or meaningful, but filled with a love and mastery of a specific genre that Tarantino knows very well. It is a homage to so many films that one has to share Tarantino’s knowledge to recognize them all. Luckily, that’s not a prerequisite to the film’s enjoyment. It just adds another dimension. DEATH PROOF, the second feature on the GRINDHOUSE double bill, was a mixed bag for me. I found the scenes with Kurt Russell to be mythic and engaging and exactly what I would have hoped for. The long passages of dialogue with the young women, however, particularly the first set, seemed endless and a tad masturbatory. For me, it took the wind out of the GRINDHOUSE sails, particularly after Robert Rodriguez’s rousing zombie actioner that preceded it. All this said, I believe each and every one of the above-mentioned films deserves another look as INGLOURIOUS proved to be so much more than I initially thought.

Upon leaving the theater after the brief closing credits for INGLOURIOUS, I thought to myself that I had just seen a truly captivating and fun Tarantino film. Already one of my favorites. But there was something nagging at me; areas of the film that seemed “underdeveloped” or misdirected. But Tarantino’s no dummy and he knows his genre films better than most. So what exactly was I feeling? What was that brewing just beneath the surface?

Well, through conversations with friends and my own inner dialogue, I started to see the film Tarantino had made, instead of the film I had expected him to make. And like some of the greatest filmmakers of all time (e.g. Stanley Kubrick, John Cassavetes) Tarantino’s new film will illicit different reactions based on expectations and might easily be dismissed and/or misunderstood. At least initially. That said, I don’t consider Tarantino a director of the caliber of a Kubrick or Cassavetes, but I think in this age of lowest-common-denominator filmmaking, Tarantino still understands the word “cinema” and has placed his own stamp on it. This puts him leagues above many of his working contemporaries.

Let’s start with the Basterds themselves. A seemingly familiar team of rag-tag rebels thrown together by circumstance and talent to create the perfect unity for accomplishing a near-impossible task at great risk to themselves. And like all Men On A Mission films, the lives of thousands, maybe millions, hang in the balance. However, the main thing that appears to be missing from Tarantino’s take on the genre is time spent getting to know these characters. In INGLOURIOUS, the Basterds are sorely lacking in dimension. We know little about most of them and, as a result, have little investment. Naturally, this seems to be the antithesis of the genre as we know it. Especially since one of Tarantino’s specialities is finding ways to make even the smallest character unique and three dimensional. Take the scene in the underground bar, for example. The celebrating Nazi soldiers are given moments that tell us something about their personalities and interactions. When the female soldier (Petra Hartung) puts her pal in a headlock and teases him, his anger, resentment and humiliation is present even as the camera pans away. Relationships, personalities and hierarchies are established almost instantaneously. Even the frightening Maj. Dieter Hellstrom (August Diehl) seems to be the only one present who recognizes that the film KING KONG was a reflection of America’s fear of the black male. While playing a name game, Hellstrom asks Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) “Am I the story of the negro in America?” When Hicox answers “No”, Hellstrom replies with “Well, then, I must be King Kong.” It is Hicox’s oblivious denial and lack of awareness that allows Hellstrom to be certain of the correct answer. So it takes a racist Gestapo Major to recognize an allegory for America’s fear and racism when we ourselves may not see it. And this, without question, tells us quite a bit about Hellstrom.

Even the new Nazi father, Master Sgt. Wilhelm, played with drunken delight by Alexander Fehling, immediately gains our sympathy and understanding. We don’t want him to die. We want him to go on to see his son Maximilian grow up. And there is an air of sorrow when he does not.

So why not make the Basterds equally as sympathetic? As revealing? Why not give them equal presence? It is Hellstrom and Wilhelm who steal the bar scene. It is they whom Tarantino chooses to explore.

At first, one starts to think perhaps crucial footage was cut from the film in order to accommodate a shorter running time. In fact, some footage was cut, but I’m starting to think that may have been a wise, insightful move. The Basterds are presented as brutal, Nazi-scalping killers. In fact, the most graphic violence in the film comes from these men.

By contrast, let’s take a look at the Germans, the Nazis, the “villains”? They are, oddly enough, more developed characters than our “heroes”. Christopher Waltz’s star-making turn as Col. Hans Landa, while being a frightful man in may ways, is also portrayed as engaging, intelligent and, at times, somewhat charming. He’s the German Sherlock Holmes. Only he’s hunting Jews. And we admire his skill, as appalling as its intent may be. And though he may not necessarily be ”likable”, his time onscreen is nothing short of mesmerizing. And while he is responsible for the death of an innocent Jewish family early in the film, this massacre is shown with bullet holes in the floor as opposed to a splattering of blood and guts. Not like the graphic nature of the Basterds whose scalpings are shown in gory detail throughout the film. And both Landa and Brad Pitt’s commanding Basterd, Lt. Aldo Raine, each let one survivor go, both scarred in their own way. Both men are playing God. The difference is that Pitt’s Raine is presented as the quintessential American caricature. He’s dimensionless and boiled down to a series of stereotypes. This is, essentially, how we have portrayed Nazis in film after film. The Aryan-featured SS officer with a scar down his cheek, a thick, repulsive accent, and a kind of sadistic glee. Pitt’s “Nazi Killer” is just that. Only he’s the American version with a scar across his throat. We’re also reminded here of the Hollywood stereotype of American Indian “savagery”. After all,  Raine claims to be part Indian and thinks of his merry gang as “Apache Jews.” So while Pitt may seem like he’s overacting or in a different film, he’s not. He’s playing the part perfectly with a full understanding of his role in the big picture. In fact, the only other character in the film who seems to be equally as broad and stereotyped is Adolph Hitler himself, played as an angry, spoiled child by Martin Wuttke. In many ways, Raine and Hitler are two peas in a pod, alter-egos, of a sort. They inhabit similar worlds within the genre. But unlike Pitt’s Raine, Wuttke’s Hitler is never shown enacting any violence himself. In fact, in one scene, Hitler is crowned with a halo of sorts while confronting  the soldier Raine set free. And Hitler never questions the soldier’s lame alibi, but instead sets him free as well, though the weight of history and his childlike relish at watching Americans slaughtered in the film within a film “Stolz de Nation” still keeps him a dangerous, buffoonish sort of villain worthy of a bloody end. But those same childlike qualities make his death just a tad less satisfying than, say, if he’d killed the surviving soldier as one would expect a villain like Hitler to do.

By the same token, Raine and his men are only heroes to us in that they’re killing Nazis and history has shown us just how horrible and atrocious the Nazis were. But, as we’re starting to realize, in Tarantino’s Nazi occupied France, the Germans are presented in a somewhat different light than we’re used to from the genre. And though Tarantino is clearly relishing his ability to rewrite history, he is not presenting the Nazi’s as innocents or heroes. He’s not glorifying or forgiving them. Hardly. That’s not the history he’s rewriting. But he manages something fascinating. When Richard Sammel’s Sgt. Werner Rachtman is asked by Raine to divulge the whereabouts of his fellow soldiers, their weapons and mission, he refuses. Even though he knows that he will face a brutal and painful death. But even though this man is a Jew-hater and murderer, there is also a bravery and strength of character, something admirable about him. And when he answers with a “Fuck You” to Raine, we understand and hope that we would have a similar conviction and commitment to our own beliefs. Yet his “Fuck You” is also followed by “And your Jew dogs”, forever reminding us who this man is, what he represents and, at the same time, instilling a sense of bewilderment at our own conflicted reactions to him. It is this depiction against the dimensionless brutality of Raine and his merry gang of mercenaries that we, as the audience, start to experience something that, at first, seems “wrong.” Isn’t Aldo Raine the hero? Aren’t the Basterds the good guys? Shouldn’t we be admiring them? Perhaps, but Tarantino concludes the sequence with Rachtman being beaten to death with a baseball bat. And we see it. Tarantino trains the camera on every skull-cracking, brain-squashing moment. And we do recoil somewhat. Even though we know that this Sgt. has committed atrocities possibly worthy of such a death. And yet there’s something else in the air, something off in this interpretation of the genre as we know it. Even the young terrified Nazi soldier who is given his freedom gains our sympathy. We “feel” for him, his fear, his humanity. We don’t want to see Raine and the others beat his head in, too.

It should be pointed out that the American who wields the bat that crushes the life out of Sgt. Rachmann is horror/torture-porn director Eli Roth (CABIN FEVER, HOSTEL). Not a fan of Roth as a filmmaker, I carry that dislike onto his acting and presence in the film. He’s just not of the caliber to be acting alongside the likes of Waltz, Pitt and others. There is also something definitively repulsive about seeing this guy who directs these pornographically violent films, wielding a bat and series of machine guns and acting out what seems like a disturbed childhood fantasy. I’d like to think that Tarantino made this choice on purpose; that it was meant to be a statement in and of itself; that my disgust with both the actor and character was intentional. That would certainly coincide with the rest of the themes inherent in the film and filmmaking. But Tarantino also used Roth to annoying effect in DEATH PROOF and produced Roth’s HOSTEL, so one can assume he’s fond of the guy. But Roth’s own take on INGLOURIOUS just adds to my revulsion: “It’s almost a deep sexual satisfaction of wanting to beat Nazis to death, an orgasmic feeling…. My character gets to beat Nazis to death. That’s something I could watch all day.” This led Roth to tag INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS “Kosher Porn.” Perhaps this is the place Roth needed to go (or was led) in order to play the character of Sgt. Donny Donowitz, a.k.a. The Bear Jew, but I do not believe it defines the essence of the film. It is a shallow interpretation that I believe speaks more to Roth’s sensibilities than to the film’s.

“When I write, I’m not very analytical about it, I don’t ever deal with the subtext cause I just know it’s there… I just keep it about the scenario, I keep it on the surface, all my concerns… And one of the fun things is that when I’m done with everything, now you get to be analytical about the process, and now I can watch the movie and see all the different connection things and see all the things that are underneath the surface. But I don’t want to deal with the underneath while I’m making it or when I’m writing it… because, again, I don’t want to hit these nails on the head too strongly. But that’s one of the things that I love the most about when I do write film criticism and stuff, is getting into the subtextual areas.”

It is what is inside the filmmaker that comes out in his or her art and finds its way into the subtext. Any artist who trusts their talent and is not stifled by some predetermined formula knows this to be true:

“My movies are painfully personal, but I’m never trying to let you know how personal they are. It’s my job to make it be personal, and also to disguise that so only I or the people who know me know how personal it is. ‘Kill Bill’ is a very personal movie…. It’s my job to invest in it and hide it inside of genre…. Most of it should be subconscious, if the work is coming from a special place. If I’m thinking and maneuvering that pen around, then that’s me doing it. I really should let the characters take it. But the characters are different facets of me, or maybe they’re not me, but they are coming from me. So when they take it, that’s just me letting my subconscious rip.”

–Tarantino , Village Voice Interview

With that, I’ll continue.

In the above-mentioned Sgt. Rachtman death scene, we are given a glimpse into the background of one of the Basterds. Til Schweiger’s Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz. At first, I assumed this was a device that would be used to reveal the histories and personalities of all the Basterds. But this turned out not to be the case. Again, no mistake. Sgt. Stiglitz was a Nazi turned Nazi-killer. He was inducted into the Basterds for his skills. He is still a German. And he is given more development than any of the American or British characters in the film.

Apparently, there were scenes shot detailing the past of Eli Roth’s Donny Donowitz. I don’t know why the scenes were removed, but judging from the structure of the film and the themes present in this cut, I believe it was probably a good idea (not to mention any more of Roth might have proven unbearable or, at the very least, unwelcome).

Now let’s take a look at the characters of the French Jew Shosanna Dreyfus and her unrequited Nazi suitor Pvt. Frederick Zoller, played by Melanie Laurent and Daniel Brühl respectively. Shosanna is cold and distant, but understandably so. Her family was brutally murdered by the Nazis under the command of Col. Landa. This “other” storyline has richer characters than any concerning the Basterds. The persistent Zoller is a walking contradiction; a German war hero who singlehandedly slaughtered upwards of 200 Americans in a 72 hour period, and who is also charming, sincere and extremely likable throughout most of the film. We can’t help but like him despite the fact that he has committed mass murder. After all, he was just a soldier doing his job and his affections for Shosanna seem downright innocent and boyish. However, the closest thing to a friend, or perhaps a mentor, that Zoller is shown as having is none other than Joseph Goebbels, played with disarming vulnerability by Sylvester Groth. Certainly not the Goebbels of our history books nor of American films past. This Goebbels has a genuine love of cinema and even sheds a tear of pure unadulterated joy when his Führer/father-figure proclaims that Goebbels’ newest film may be his best ever. Ironically, the German director responsible for the Führer’s new favorite film is nowhere to be found. He is not seated in the private booth with Goebbels and Hitler, nor is he (or she) ever mentioned or congratulated. This is especially noteworthy as Zoller is the star of the film within a film and Shosanna pangs him earlier with the line “I’m French. We respect directors” when he asks her why she included director G.W. Pabst’s name on the marquee for an earlier film showing at her cinema.

Meanwhile, Shosanna’s true love, her projectionist and partner in crime Marcel, played with understated pride by Jacky Ido, enacts a crucial role in the events to take place and in aiding in the development of Shosanna’s onscreen character. Sadly, he himself has far too little screen time and the film yearns for the possible inclusion of a scene that was shot and removed before release detailing how Shosanna became the owner of the theater and met and fell in love with Marcel. Not having seen this footage, I obviously cannot comment on the actual benefits of its inclusion into the story. Nonetheless, the result is once again going against convention and not giving equal attention to our typically heroic characters and, though we like Marcel, we are given little of him.

But Shosanna has another man in her life. Col. Landa. The scene staged between these two is filled with all the tension one would hope for from such an encounter. It is almost Hitchcockian in the way its deceptively simple dialogue places you on the edge of your seat. Like the film’s opening scene between Landa and Denis Menochet’s strong and sympathetic Pierre Lapadite. Few films can claim such a riveting opening consisting almost entirely of 20-plus minutes of pure conversation (as well as appropriately inspired camerawork).

But back to the scene at hand… One wonders fearfully if Landa knows who the woman he is sharing strudel with actually is? Was his ordering Shosanna a glass of milk to compliment her dessert an innocent gesture or a subtle torture? Or is all this insistence on milk and creme just Landa’s way of weeding out Jews by seeing who will consume dairy products not in sync with proper Orthodox dietary laws? We never find out. Shosanna’s plot to kill the Nazi elite, though successful, is never revealed to Landa, whose job it is to prevent such actions from occurring. Shosanna gets her revenge, but the man who killed her family is not there to witness it. He never knows who was behind it. Tarantino pulls the rug out from under us yet again as he denies us, as well as Shosanna, that moment of gleeful, personal revenge. In fact, Landa is too busy working out the details of his happy future living the good life on Nantucket Island to notice much else!

And here is where the lines blur even deeper as we find ourselves spiraling toward our climax. The charming and terrifying Landa gets his hands truly bloody for the first time in the film as he strangles to death German actress turned British spy Bridgett von Hammersmark, played by the lovely and tough Diane Kruger. There is a brutality here that we have not seen before. Though he is responsible for the killing of Shosanna’s family, he has his soldiers do the actual dirty work. It is an important distinction and somehow manages to change how we feel about this character when he decides to do exactly what von Hammersmark was attempting by betraying his country and his comrades. It is he who carries on her work! His killing of von Hammersmark is not a product of national pride, but of personal pride. It has more to do with her foolish attempt to trick him than with what it is she is trying to achieve. Landa becomes truly monstrous at this point, beyond his already unsettling presence. And this, ironically, just moments before he decides to become a willing U.S. ally and let the Basterd’s plan run its course. It’s almost as if he had to prove his brutal worth within the context of the film before trying to become a Basterd himself.

At the same time, Shosanna’s boyish Nazi suitor shows another disarming quality as he exhibits a level of disgust at watching the film version of himself massacring the “enemy.” But just as we think we know where this is going, Tarantino throws us for another loop as Zoller shows us the dark side that allowed him to kill those people in the first place. Gone is the charming suitor, and in his stead we find a wrathful potential rapist. But it’s only after Shosanna has shot him down, both literally and figuratively, that she finally shows any real signs of sympathy and remorse. But it’s a direct result of her glimpsing Zoller’s “innocent onscreen hero” projected on the big screen before her and not Zoller himself. She, like the film’s Nazi audience, is taken in by the propaganda machine responsible for so many mistruths and untimely deaths. And it results in her own. Her moment of weakness (or humanity–you decide) is met with her brutal shooting at the hands of the real Zoller whose final act is one of bloody vengeance. Shosanna doesn’t live to see the fruits of her labor. By this point in the film, Shosanna is inexorably linked to her Nazi audience both physically, emotionally and psychologically. When she puts on her rouge to prepare for the evening’s bloody proceedings, it is clearly more war paint than makeup, and the swastika looming in the background completes the picture. It should also be noted that it is film itself, the highly flammable 35mm nitrate prints Shosanna has collected, that is used to spark the fire that destroys everyone in the theater and ends the war. Like its effect on Shosanna’s feelings toward Zoller, it is both creative and destructive, truth and lies, as our characters are both beautiful and ugly simultaneously. They are flip-flopping now at a rapid pace. The distinction between villains and heroes narrows even further. All victory, for the characters and audience, is marred.

And it is around this point in the film that we start to realize that Tarantino is truly playing God, not only with our moral conscience and our genre expectations, but with history itself. While we’re busy wondering how Hitler and Goebbels and the rest of the Nazi elite will escape the impending arson (because history insists that they must), Tarantino gives us the one thing no film in this genre has attempted before. He lets them all die. The war comes to a screeching halt and millions of lives that were lost in actuality, are spared. We are permitted to celebrate the fantasy death of these historical monsters as the film’s opening statement “Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France” comes to fruition. But all at a price.

While watching the film version of Zoller’s “heroic” massacre of American soldiers, the Germans cheer and celebrate each and every brutal killing. And in doing so, they disgust us. But suddenly the tables are turned as we find ourselves cheering the deaths of Hitler, Goebbels and others trapped inside the burning theater. As they panic and claw at one another in an attempt to escape the flames and smoke that will consume them (oven and gas chamber references welcome), two Basterds mow them down with machine guns. Men and women, in their best celebratory attire, drop like flies, their bodies riddled with bullets. Meanwhile, Shosanna’s laughing face is projected onto the smoke from the flames like that of a crazed demon or the devil herself. She has placed herself in the film. She is the film. And the propaganda of her final act is now aimed at us. This is truly a scene of genuine horror. Heroes and monsters are suddenly lumped together as the audience watching INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS becomes a mirror image of the audience of Nazi elite watching Stolz Der Nation or Nation’s Pride. We are denied our moment of pure vengeance, of having done the right thing, of the heroes overcoming the villains. Everyone here is a villain. Even Donowitz’s frenzied destruction of Hitler’s face is both satisfying and sickening all at the same time. Hitler’s long dead by the time Donowitz turns his machine gun on him one last time. It all happens so fast that we are never given a moment to revel in Hitler’s realization that he has been outwitted and undone. It simply doesn’t occur. Our fantasy scenario has been marred and we are left unsure as to whether we should cheer or put our heads down and mourn the loss of all humanity.

And this is carried out right up to the last frame in the film. Though we know Raine’s carving of the Nazi swastika deep into Landa’s forehead is just and deserved, it is also shown in such graphic detail as to be simultaneously sickening. In fact, it is through Landa’s (and, in an earlier scene, a young Nazi soldier’s) point of view that we witness Raine’s final deed of “just vengeance,” making us, the viewer, the recipient of his knife-wielding handiwork. These shots, consciously or unconsciously, are disturbingly reminiscent of a famous publicity still (used on the film’s soundtrack LP cover) from Wes Craven’s chilling and bloody 1972 revenge-fest, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, taken from a scene in which one of the film’s sadistic killers, while out in the woods, carves his name into his victim’s flesh and then leans back to admire it, while his equally twisted partners-in-crime look on, impressed.

As a result, in the final shots of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, Raine and his Basterd partner (B.J. Novak) seem a bit more demented than heroic, even though we can’t flaw them for their actions and, to a degree, celebrate them. But Tarantino makes it just a tad harder to revel in their deeds without infusing a small tinge of something else there too. Something lacking humanity.

And so, like Cassavetes’ use of the public’s expectations of the Hollywood Romance genre to turn the audience on their heads in MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ, Tarantino takes our expectations of the Men On A Mission and American World War II genres and completely subverts them. He gives us our cake, and lets us eat it, too. But he purposefully leaves out the sugar.

Un film ‘touching’ despre care cred că se va mai vorbi.
Regia – Nick Cassavetes. Cu Abigail Breslin, Cameron Diaz, Alec Baldwin. După romanul omonim scris de Jodi Picoult

- postado por Cauli Fernandes

Nas ruas úmidas e enevoadas de Nova York se vê, como em qualquer outra grande metrópole, pessoas das mais variadas raças, ideologias, descendências, se cruzando umas com as outras sem notar o sujeito que está ao lado, cada uma com grandes histórias para contar que muitas vezes serão deixadas na beira da calçada.

Na mesma cidade, no ano de 1959, era exibido nos cinemas Sombras, primeiro filme de John Cassavetes (1929-1989). No filme, assistimos a história da garota Leila, seu amor por Tony e suas relações com os irmãos dela. Mais do que isso, podemos dizer que o filme se trata da relação de todos eles com a cidade e o que esta tem a oferecer às amizades e à paixão do casal central. Em uma das cenas mais belas, Ben, um dos irmãos de Leila, leva os seus amigos para passear pelo Museu de Arte Moderna, e o que vemos é a interação completa dos personagens com o espaço. Os três amigos andam pelo Museu tentando interpretar as obras mostradas, tentando extrair do que veem algo que valha para a vida deles, mas não conseguem.

Essa é outra característica de Sombras: as pessoas ali são à margem da sociedade e tentam se encaixar da forma que for, seja apreciando obras de arte, organizando festas ou dando em cima de mulheres em bares. Leila, seus irmãos e amigos são marginalizados, por terem baixa renda ou por serem negros e mestiços. Mesmo todos tendo uma condição social parecida, muitas vezes os preconceitos pela cor os movem uns contras os outros.

Mas o que mais marca é a maneira de ele parecer um “filme de rua”. A câmera (às vezes na mão) passeia por avenidas, plataformas de trens, casas, táxis, preocupado com o que cada um desses lugares tem a mostrar; quer ver rostos de passantes e gente desconhecida, pessoas como aquelas lá de cima; Nova York foi pra tela de cinema em carne e osso. O que acentua esse aspecto também é a técnica de improvisação de Cassavetes, que usava atores não-profissionais.

Este genial diretor foi casado com a atriz Gena Rowlands. Trabalharam juntos em vários filmes, como Faces e Amantes. Morreu de cirrose hepática por seus problemas com a bebida. Mesmo com uma morte nada gloriosa para um grande expoente do cinema independente, ele será sempre lembrado por ter avançado a narrativa e o modo de filmar americano.

4/5

Ficha Técnica: Sombras (Shadows) – 1959, EUA. Dir: John Cassavetes. Elenco: Lelia Goldoni, Anthony Ray, Hugh Hurd, Ben Carruthers.

Erika Staiti – from Go, Poet, Go (2′26″). Recorded shortly after the January 17, 2009, performance of the text at Canessa Park and archived in its entirety (10′11″) on A Voice Box (a faulty mic connection spoiled the live recording). Two poems from Shampoo 32. Staiti’s contribution to the SPT Aggression Conference in May 2008. Her discourse documenting project What We Said.  Stan Apps on Verse/Switch & Stop Motion (a “stapled, xeroxed book” in private circulation). Kevin Killian’s account of an evening of Neo Benshi that included Staiti’s telling of a scene from Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence. • Jennifer Manzano alludes to Staiti’s performance in a discussion of “poets and their clothes.”

I received this boxed set as a gift many moons ago, but in bad friend fashion, hadn’t watched it yet.

Cassavetes was a filmmaker who made his mark in the realm of cinema verité, capturing a reality of life in film that perhaps hasn’t been captured before or since.

Employing a small closely knit group of actors like his wife Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk (known to most as TV detective Columbo, Cassavetes shot often on handheld cameras himself, catching the moment at it’s most tender and often uncomfortable.

A true pioneer and like other marvels in their craft didn’t see himself as a director (as Brian Eno didn’t see himself as a musician), he was there to help the actors understand their character, ingest them and live them on screen.

I marvel at Cassavetes ambition to find truth, but not just on the written page, but to allow the actors to find it themselves.

This video with Cassavetes, Falk and Co. gives you a sense of their sense of play and creative verve (don’t miss the retro commercials either).

Opening Night… so far this is the strangest Cassavetes film that I have seen. At least in terms of literal events that take place and some of the techniques that he employed. For example, Myrtle’s fear manifesting itself in the form of the teenage girl who is stuck down early on is something I did not expect. Also, the use of a melodramatic score, while not totally absent from his other works, and not necessarily used in excess here, was a bit more noticeable at times. However, I have invariably found all of his work strange upon first viewing; I always come to love the unfamiliar elements on subsequent viewings.

The cinematography is excellent as usual. To be honest, I know next to nothing about what constitutes a well shot film. I do know that like all of his films, the camera work serves to fully engulf the viewer in whatever is taking place. Brushing aside conventions, Cassavetes cuts in the middle of sentences, as well as before a scene would traditionally be considered complete. Events are left open-ended. During the opening night, when the precarious performance of the much rehearsed play is well under way, the reactions of just about every major character are given attention. This is also a common element of Cassavetes’ films. Similarly, to my unsophisticated eye, close-ups are applied at seemingly random times. They never feel as if the are being used inappropriately, however, and are a favorite Cassavetes feature of mine.

The character of Myrtle reminded me a bit of Mable from A Woman Under the Influence. She attracts much attention, but for obviously different reasons. While Mable involves herself with every person and event she comes across to transmit her joy and energy, Myrtle seems to feel trapped because she is so involved. The play she is involved with has her featured in a central role. This alone would clearly put pressure on anyone. Myrtle, though, feels that her role is devoid of meaning. This is not merely related to just the play; her life has been altered after the aforementioned death of a young girl (who was also a fan). Her sense of her own maturity in age and purpose in life begin to bear down on her so greatly that she calls into question the sincerity of the character she is playing.

I call this film strange, but as I write about it, I realize that a better word, perhaps, is unfamiliar. This is not at all used in a pejorative sense. What have ultimately become my favorite films have all started out as different or unfamiliar. What has cemented them in the category of favorites has been multiple viewings, which is definitely something that this piece demands. Unfortunately, I only have two more Cassavetes films to go (Husbands and Love Streams) before his major works are all familiar to me. The benefits and drawbacks are obvious. On one hand, I can appreciate how remarkable these works are. On the other hand, no more fresh strangeness.

H ΑΔΕΛΦΗ ΜΟΥ ΚΙ ΕΓΩ

MY SISTER’S KEEPER-ΗΠΑ-2009-106′

Σκηνοθεσία: Nick Cassavetes

Πρωταγωνιστούν: Cameron Diaz , Abigail Breslin, Alec Baldwin, Sofia Vassilieva, Jason Patric, Joan Cusack

Στα 13 της χρόνια, η Αννα έχει επιβληθεί σε αμέτρητα χειρουργεία και μεταγγίσεις αίματος, έτσι ώστε η μεγαλύτερη αδερφή της, Κέιτ να καταφέρει να κερδίσει τη μάχη με την λευχαιμία που την ταλαιπωρεί από τα πρώτα παιδικά της χρόνια. Προϊόν τεχνητής γονιμοποίησης, η Άννα ήρθε στον κόσμο, για να αποτελέσει συμβατό δότη για την άρρωστη αδερφή της. Όταν θα ανακαλύψει τον λόγο και τον τρόπο που ήρθε στη ζωή, η αλήθεια θα τη συγκλονίσει. Θα πάρει τότε μιαν απόφαση που θα τη φέρει αντιμέτωπη με την οικογένεια της και θα θέσει σε κίνδυνο την ζωή της αγαπημένης της αδερφής. Στο πλευρό της ένας συνταξιοδοτημένος δικηγόρος, θα τη βοηθήσει στον δικαστικό της αγώνα εναντίον της ίδιας της, της οικογένειας.

SITE : http://www.mysisterskeepermovie.com/

ΜΕ ΑΡΙΣΤΑ ΤΟ 5

ΓΙΑΝΝΗΣ ΖΟΥΜΠΟΥΛΑΚΗΣ (ΤΟ ΒΗΜΑ)-1

ΠΑΥΛΟΣ ΚΑΓΙΟΣ (ΤΑ ΝΕΑ)-2,5

ΧΑΡΗΣ ΚΑΛΟΓΕΡΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ (EXODOS)-2

ΝΙΝΟΣ ΦΕΝΕΚ ΜΙΚΕΛΙΔΗΣ (ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΤΥΠΙΑ)-1

ΔΕΛΤΙΟ ΤΥΠΟΥ

Η ταινία είναι βασισμένη στο ομώνυμο βιβλίο της Jodi Picoult. Το βιβλίο κυκλοφορεί στα ελληνικά με τον τίτλο «Ο Φύλακας της Αδελφής μου» από τις Εκδόσεις Μοντέρνοι Καιροί

Περίληψη

Η ζωή της Σάρα, του Μπράιαν Φιτζέραλντ και του μικρού τους γιου αλλάζει μια για πάντα όταν μαθαίνουν πως η δίχρονη κόρη τους, η Κέιτ, έχει λευχαιμία. Η μοναδική ελπίδα των γονιών είναι να κάνουν ακόμα ένα παιδί, το οποίο θα μπορέσει να σώσει τη ζωή της Κέιτ. Για κάποιους, αυτή η κίνηση θέτει πολλά ηθικά διλήμματα. Για τους Φιτζέραλντ όμως, και ειδικά για την Σάρα δεν υπάρχει άλλη επιλογή, από το να κάνουν ότι είναι δυνατόν για να κρατήσουν την Κέιτ ζωντανή. Και αυτό που χρειάζεται για να γίνει αυτό πραγματικότητα είναι η Άννα.

Ο δεσμός της Κέιτ (Σοφία Βασίλιεβα) και της Άννα (Άμπιγκεϊλ Μπρέσλιν) είναι πολύ πιο στενός, απ’ ότι μεταξύ των περισσοτέρων αδερφών. Παρόλο που η Κέιτ είναι μεγαλύτερη, εξαρτάται από τη μικρότερη αδερφή της. Στην πραγματικότητα η ζωή της εξαρτάται εξολοκλήρου από τη ζωή της Άννα.

Καθ’ όλη τη διάρκεια της νεαρής ζωής τους, οι δύο αδερφές αναγκάζονται να υπομένουν διάφορες ιατρικές «δοκιμασίες» και να παραμένουν για πολλές μέρες σε δωμάτια νοσοκομείων, γεγονός που ενισχύει το στενό οικογενειακό δεσμό τους. Η Σάρα (Κάμερον Ντίαζ) μία τρυφερή σύζυγος και μητέρα που άφησε την καριέρα της ως δικηγόρος για να φροντίσει την κόρη της, αισθάνεται πολύ συχνά «εγκλωβισμένη» εξαιτίας του δύσκολου ρόλου που έχει αναλάβει στην προσπάθειά της να σώσει την Κέιτ. Ο στοργικός της σύζυγος, Μπράιαν (Τζέισον Πάτρικ), φαίνεται συχνά αδύναμος και παθητικός μπροστά στη δύναμη και την αποφασιστικότητα που δείχνει η γυναίκα του. Και ο μοναδικός τους γιος, ο Τζέσι (Έβαν Έλινγκσον), φαίνεται πως είναι παραμερισμένος, καθώς η Άννα και η Κέιτ «κλέβουν την παράσταση».

Μέχρι που η Άννα, 11 χρονών πλέον, λέει «ως εδώ!». Ζητώντας να πάρει την κατάσταση στα χέρια της, αναθέτει στο δικηγόρο Κάμπελ Αλεξάντερ (Άλεκ Μπόλντουιν) να την υπερασπιστεί, ξεκινώντας μία δικαστική διαμάχη που θα σπάσει στα δύο τη οικογένεια…και που θα αφήνει «ξεκρέμαστη» τη ζωή της Κέιτ.

Βασισμένη στο μπεστ σέλερ της Τζόντι Πίκουλτ, η ταινία «Η ΑΔΕΛΦΗ ΜΟΥ ΚΙ ΕΓΩ» φέρνει στην επιφάνεια τρομακτικές αλήθειες που βάζουν σε δοκιμασία τις αντιλήψεις σχετικά με την αγάπη και την πίστη στην οικογένεια και δίνουν νέο νόημα στον ορισμό της γιατρειάς.

«Όταν ήμουν παιδί, η μητέρα μου, μου είπε ήταν ήμουν ένα μικρό κομμάτι γαλάζιου ουρανού που ήρθε σε αυτόν τον κόσμο επειδή εκείνη και ο πατέρας μου αγαπιόντουσαν πολύ. Δεν ήταν παρά αργότερα που συνειδητοποίησα ότι αυτό δεν ήταν εντελώς αλήθεια.» – Άννα

Όταν η Σάρα Φιτζέραλντ γέννησε την Κέιτ, εκείνη και ο σύζυγός της ο Μπράιαν, ξανάνιωσαν με τον ερχομό του νέου τους παιδιού. Αλλά η χαρά έδωσε τη θέση της στο φόβο όταν το πολυαγαπημένο τους παιδί διαγνώστηκε ότι έπασχε από μία σπάνια μορφή λευχαιμίας. Η υγεία της Κέιτ έγινε το επίκεντρο της οικογένειας, και η κατάσταση αυτή εντάθηκε με τη γέννηση της αδερφής της Άννα.

Αλλά η Άννα δεν ήταν απλώς ακόμα ένα παιδί στην οικογένεια. Εξυπηρετούσε μία αναγκαιότητα, καθώς ήταν ειδικά «σχεδιασμένη» γενετικά, ώστε να σώσει τη ζωή της Κέιτ.

Η Κάμερον Ντίαζ, που ενσαρκώνει τη Σάρα, αναφέρει, «Όταν διάβασα για πρώτη φορά το σενάριο, μου φάνηκε ότι ήταν μία από αυτές τις ιστορίες που θα με κυνηγούσαν για πάντα. Αισθάνθηκα να συμπονώ την Σάρα αλλά δεν συμφωνούσα πάντα με τις επιλογές της και αυτό ήταν ιδιαίτερα ενδιαφέρον για μένα.»

Ζώντας έντεκα χρόνια μέσα σε αυτήν τη ρουτίνα και τις ατελείωτες ιατρικές εξετάσεις, τις επιπλοκές και την παραμονή στα νοσοκομεία – τα νεφρά της Κέιτ δεν λειτουργούν πια. Χρειάζεται να βρει δότη, και ακολουθώντας αυτό που έκαναν μια ζωή, οι γονείς της στρέφονται στην Άννα. Αλλά η Άννα, παρόλο που είναι μόλις έντεκα χρόνων, αναρωτιέται για πρώτη φορά, «Ποιος νοιάζεται για μένα;» Και για πρώτη φορά αρνείται να δώσει ακόμα ένα κομμάτι του εαυτού της για να σώσει την αδερφή της την Κέιτ. Αντίθετα, αποφασίζει να μηνήσει τους γονείς της και να απαιτήσει το δικαίωμα να αποφασίζει η ίδια για το σώμα της. Αυτή η απόφαση της Άννα θα έχει βαθιές και σκληρές επιπτώσεις.

«Η Άννα γνωρίζει ότι οι γονείς της θα γίνουν έξαλλοι μαζί της, και ότι όλοι θα τη θεωρούν εγωίστρια και κακία,» λέει η νεαρή ηθοποιός Άμπιγκεϊλ Μπρέσλιν, που παίζει την Άννα. «Αλλά αυτή δεν είναι μία απόφαση που πήρε έτσι εύκολα. Έχει τους δικούς της λόγους.»

Η ταινία «Η ΑΔΕΛΦΗ ΜΟΥ ΚΙ ΕΓΩ» είναι βασισμένη στο συγκλονιστικό ομώνυμο μυθιστόρημα της Τζόντι Πίκουλτ. Μέχρι τη στιγμή που κέντρισε το ενδιαφέρον του δημιουργού Νικ Κασσαβέτη, είχε ήδη γίνει μπεστ σέλερ και ένα από τα πιο αγαπημένα θέματα συζήτησης στις λέσχες βιβλιόφιλων όλου του κόσμου. Στις διαφορετικές μεταξύ τους ταινίες του όπως στις “John Q,” “Alpha Dog” και “The Notebook,” ο Κασσαβέτης εξερευνά τις λεπτές αποχρώσεις της ανθρώπινης κατάστασης, τη φύση της αγάπης, της ελεύθερης βούλησης και της ανθρώπινης αξιοπρέπειας. Και αυτά τα θέματα εμφανίζονται και στο βιβλίο της Πίκουλτ.

Ο παραγωγός Μαρκ Τζόνσον προσθέτει ότι, παράλληλα με τα συγκλονιστικά θέματα και τους χαρακτήρες που εμφανίζονται στο βιβλίο, ακόμα και η δομή του προσφερόταν για να μεταφερθεί στον κινηματογράφο. «Στο επίκεντρό του, το βιβλίο έχει την οικογένεια και αυτό είναι ένα θέμα το οποίο συγκινεί πολλούς αναγνώστες. Η Τζόντι καταπιάνεται με θέματα και περιγράφει καταστάσεις με τις οποίες μπορούμε όλοι να ταυτιστούμε και μας βάζει στη διαδικασία να σκεφτούμε πως θα αντιδρούσαμε εμείς σε μία αντίστοιχη περίπτωση. Εκείνο που κάνει επίσης με πολύ έξυπνο τρόπο στο βιβλίο – και ελπίζω να καταφέρουμε να το κάνουμε και εμείς στην ταινία – είναι να αφηγηθεί την ιστορία μέσα από τη ματιά πολλών διαφορετικών ανθρώπων, οπότε έχεις την αίσθηση ότι βλέπεις το πώς αντιλαμβάνεται το πρόβλημα το κάθε μέλος της οικογένειας ξεχωριστά. Αυτό το υλικό είναι πολύ πλούσιο για έναν δημιουργό ταινιών – ένα οικογενειακό δράμα με βαθιές επιπλοκές – και σίγουρα κάτι το οποίο ο Νικ κατανοεί καλά και με το οποίο του αρέσει να καταπιάνεται,» σημειώνει ο Τζόνσον.

Προκειμένου να προσαρμόσουν το βιβλίο στο σενάριο, οι δημιουργοί της ταινίας ήξεραν ότι ήταν σημαντικό να βρουν ένα σεναριογράφο που θα εκτιμούσε και θα σεβόταν τα θέματα του βιβλίου και τις κλιμακώσεις του, αλλά και τους χαρακτήρες και την υπόθεσή του. Η ταινία «Η ΑΔΕΛΦΗ ΜΟΥ ΚΙ ΕΓΩ» ενώνει ξανά το συγγραφέα / σκηνοθέτη Κασσαβέτη με το σεναριογράφο Τζέρεμι Λέβεν, με τον οποίο είχε συνεργαστεί στο παρελθόν στη μεγάλη κινηματογραφική επιτυχία «The Notebook».

Ο Λέβεν, που εκτός από την κινηματογραφική του καριέρα, έχει επαγγελματική εμπειρία στην παιδοψυχολογία, τη νευροεπιστήμη και την ψυχοφαρμακολογία, λέει, «Πιστεύω ότι η ιατρική μου εξειδίκευση με βοήθησε να κατανοήσω περισσότερο την ιστορία. Αισθανόμουν ότι ήταν πολύ σημαντικό να χειριστεί κανείς με ευαισθησία αυτά που έπρεπε να αντιμετωπίσει αυτή η οικογένεια,» καταθέτει ο Λέβεν, «και το πώς ολόκληρη η ζωή μία μητέρας μπορεί να καθοριστεί από την προσπάθειά της να σώσει τη ζωή του παιδιού της, ακόμα και εις βάρος άλλων μελών της οικογένειά της.»

«Απλά να ξέρεις, ότι δεν πρόκειται να την αφήσω να πεθάνει. Με τίποτα.» – Σάρα.

Στον καίριο ρόλο του αρχηγού της οικογένειας, η Κάμερον Ντίαζ ήταν η πρώτη ηθοποιός που επιλέχτηκε για την ταινία. Ο ρόλος της επίμονης μητέρας ενός άρρωστου παιδιού την εξίταρε επειδή η πρώτη της αντίδραση απέναντι στην Σάρα Φιτζέραλντ ήταν έντονη και βαθιά.

«Ήθελα να την καταλάβω. Ποια ήταν, πως εξελίχτηκε έτσι ο χαρακτήρας της και γιατί παίρνει τις αποφάσεις που παίρνει,» λέει. «Αυτή η αναζήτηση ήταν πολύ συναρπαστική για μένα και σκέφτηκα ότι θα ήταν μία πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα πρόκληση να προσπαθήσω να μεταφέρω την ιστορία της κινηματογραφικά.»

Παρόλο που είναι περισσότερο γνωστή για τους ρόλους της σε κωμωδίες, ήταν η ερμηνεία της σε δραματικούς ρόλους που φάνηκε ενδιαφέρουσα στον Τζόνσον. «Είμαι ‘οπαδός’ της Κάμερον πολύ καιρό τώρα και ειλικρινά οι δραματικοί της ρόλοι είναι οι αγαπημένοι μου. Νομίζω πως η ερμηνεία της στο ‘In Her Shoes’ ήταν αξιοθαύμαστη. Ήταν καταπληκτική στο ‘Being John Malkovich,’ στο ‘Vanilla Sky’…και η λίστα δεν τελειώνει εδώ.»

Κατά τη διαδικασία της εξοικείωσης με το χαρακτήρα της Σάρα Φιτζέραλντ και της ενσάρκωσης της αφοσίωσης που δείχνει στο άρρωστο παιδί της, η Ντίαζ έμαθε να μην προσπαθεί συνεχώς να την κρίνει. Ο χαρακτήρας δεν μπορεί εύκολα να σκιαγραφηθεί ως «καλός» ή «κακός», αλλά μάλλον κινείται σε μία σκοτεινή ηθική περιοχή. Η Ντίαζ αντίθετα προσπάθησε να την συμπονέσει και να κατανοήσει την ιδιαίτερα δύσκολη κατάσταση που ζούσε και την έκανε να δρα με συγκεκριμένο τρόπο.

Κατά τη φάση προετοιμασίας της για το ρόλο, η Ντίαζ λέει, «Μίλησα με γονείς που είχαν άρρωστα παιδιά και στα παιδιά τους, ώστε να καταλάβω τι σήμαινε το να είναι κάποιος σε αυτήν τη θέση. Η αλήθεια είναι πως δεν μπορείς να ξέρεις τι θα έκανες, παρά μόνο όταν πραγματικά βρεθείς στη θέση τους. Μόνο αν έχεις ένα παιδί που πάσχει από μία ανίατη ασθένεια, μπορείς να ξέρεις σε τι όρια θα έφτανες ώστε να σώσεις τη ζωή του. Και σκέφτηκα ότι αυτό παρουσίαζε μεγάλο ενδιαφέρον να το εξετάσει κανείς, επειδή αρέσει πολύ στους ανθρώπους να κρίνουν τους άλλους. Έτσι δεν είναι; Αλλά με τη Σάρα δεν μπόρεσα να το κάνω αυτό,» σημειώνει η Ντίαζ.

Την Κέιτ, την κόρη της Σάρα που πάσχει από λευχαιμία, την ενσαρκώνει η Σοφία Βασίλιεβα. Παρόλο που ζει με τη σκιά του θανάτου σε όλη της τη ζωή, η έφηβη ηθοποιός λέει ότι ήταν το στοιχείο του δεσμού μεταξύ των μελών της οικογένειας, που είναι κοινό σε όλο τον κόσμο, που της τράβηξε το ενδιαφέρον στο σενάριο και το ρόλο.

Ιδιαίτερα, της κέντρισε το ενδιαφέρον η φιλοσοφία και η αγάπη για τη ζωή που είχε η Κέιτ. «Επειδή η Κέιτ ήταν τόσο κοντά στο θάνατο, ξέρει να εκτιμά τα πράγματα – την κάθε μυρωδιά, το κάθε πουλάκι. Κάθε ανάσα είναι πολύτιμη για αυτήν- όλα αυτά που οι περισσότεροι άνθρωποι θεωρούν δεδομένα. Είναι αγνή και αυτό με τράβηξε στο χαρακτήρα της. Είναι ένας από τους πιο αξιοθαύμαστους χαρακτήρες που έχω γνωρίσει μέχρι τώρα,» λέει η Βασίλιεβα.

Το άλλο μισό της Κέιτ και ο σύνδεσμός της για τη ζωή, η Άννα, είναι ο καταλύτης για την απρόσμενη αλλαγή της πορείας της οικογένειας.

«Πραγματικά πιστεύω ότι ο κεντρικός άξονας της ταινίας έπρεπε να είναι η Άννα, ότι η ειλικρίνεια των συναισθημάτων της ήταν αυτό που θα ‘έδενε’ την ταινία,» λέει η συγγραφέας Τζόντι Πίκουλτ. Η ήδη υποψήφια για Όσκαρ ηθοποιός, Άμπιγκειλ Μπρέσλιν, που συμπλήρωσε τα 12 χρόνια της κατά τη διάρκεια των γυρισμάτων, αφοσιώθηκε πλήρως στο ρόλο της Άννα, της οποίας η μήνυση εναντίον των γονιών της πηγάζει στην ουσία από την αστείρευτη αγάπη της για την αδερφή και την οικογένειά της.

«Θυμάμαι όταν διάβασα το σενάριο για πρώτη φορά που είπα στη μητέρα μου, ‘Πρέπει να παίξω αυτό το κορίτσι,’ Ξετρελάθηκα με το χαρακτήρα της. Μου άρεσαν όλοι οι χαρακτήρες, μου άρεσε η οικογένεια – ήταν κάτι που ήθελα οπωσδήποτε να κάνω,» λέει η Μπρέσλιν.

Η Μπρέσλιν αρχικά ανησυχούσε ότι το κλίμα στο σετ θα ήταν βαρύ και καταθλιπτικό, αλλά όπως αποκαλύπτει δεν ήταν έτσι τα πράγματα.

«Όταν έμαθα ότι πήρα το ρόλο, σκέφτηκα ότι υπήρχαν κομμάτια του που ήταν πολύ θλιβερά και ότι όλοι θα ήταν πολύ σοβαροί. Αλλά τελικά, όλοι ήταν πολύ καλοί και τα γυρίσματα είχαν γέλιο. Κάποιες σκηνές ήταν θλιβερές, αλλά αυτό δεν επηρέαζε το κλίμα των γυρισμάτων,» θυμάται η Μπρέσλιν.

Αποδίδει αυτήν την ατμόσφαιρα στο σκηνοθέτη, που διατήρησε ένα ελαφρύ κλίμα, ένα γρήγορο ρυθμό και ήταν υποστηρικτικός απέναντι σε όλους. «Ο Νικ είχε πάντα χιούμορ και ήταν πάντα δίπλα μου όταν τον χρειαζόμουν. Μπορείς να του μιλήσεις για τα πάντα. Και πάντα θα σε ακούσει είτε έχει να κάνει με την ταινία είτε με το ρόλο σου είτε με ο,τιδήποτε άλλο θέλεις να του πεις. Σε αφήνει να δοκιμάσεις τις ιδέες σου. Είναι πολύ άνετος,» λέει η Μπρέσλιν.

Η Πίκουλτ ήταν ιδιαίτερα ενθουσιασμένη που η έμπειρη Μπρέσλιν θα έπαιρνε το ρόλο της Άννα. «Η Άννα είναι η καρδιά της ιστορίας, και ειλικρινά δεν μπορώ να φανταστώ άλλη ηθοποιό στην ηλικία της Άμπι την οποία θα εμπιστευόμουν τόσο πολύ για αυτό το ρόλο.»

Η συγγραφέας θυμάται μία επίσκεψή της στο σετ, όταν γυριζόταν μία ιδιαίτερα έντονα φορτισμένη συναισθηματικά σκηνή για την Άννα. «Την παρακολούθησα να γυρίζει μία σκηνή στην οποία η Άννα κλαίει στο πλευρό της Κέιτ, σε μία φάση που η Κέιτ είναι πολύ άρρωστη. Και τις παρακολούθησα να γυρίζουν αυτή τη σκηνή…δεν θυμάμαι…οκτώ ή δέκα φορές στη σειρά. Και μόλις ο Νικ φώναζε ‘cut’ η Άμπι γελούσε με κάτι άλλο. Και μετά γύριζε και πάλι αυτή τη σκηνή με εξαιρετικό τρόπο. Και θυμάμαι ότι απλά σκέφτηκα ότι αυτό το κορίτσι είναι απίστευτο!»

Ενώ η μητέρα της Άννα διακατέχεται από την εμμονή να σώσει την αδερφή της, η αμετανόητη άρνηση της Άννα να βοηθήσει αναγκάζει τον πατέρα της να δει τα πράγματα από μία άλλη οπτική. Ο Τζέισον Πάτρικ ενσαρκώνει τον Μπράιαν, το στοργικό, αλλά ιδιαίτερα μπερδεμένο σύζυγο της Σάρα.

«Ο Μπράιαν είναι ο πραγματικά διχασμένος,» παρατηρεί ο Πάτρικ. «Αυτός και η γυναίκα του αντιμετωπίζουν κατά κάποιο τρόπο το πρόβλημα του Σολωμόντα, καθώς πρέπει να επιλέξουν ανάμεσα στις ανάγκες των δύο παιδιών τους, αλλά αυτός είναι πιο αναποφάσιστος. Η γυναίκα του είναι σίγουρη για την απόφασή της, ενώ εκείνος σκέφτεται περισσότερο πώς να είναι δίκαιος απέναντι και στα δύο παιδιά του.»

Την οικογένεια συμπληρώνουν οι Χέδερ Γουόλκιστ, που ενσαρκώνει την αδερφή της Σάρα, την έμπιστη θεία Κέλι και ο Έβαν Έλινγκσον, που παίζει τον Τζέσι, τον έφηβο γιο της Σάρα και του Μπράιαν, που κατά κάποιο τρόπο είναι «χαμένος» στη δίνη του προβλήματος που αντιμετωπίζει η οικογένεια του. Ο νεαρός ηθοποιός, όπως σημειώνει η Ντίαζ, πραγματικά «άνθισε» ενσαρκώνοντας τον Τζέσι και ο ρόλος του γινόταν όλο και περισσότερο σημαντικός κατά τη διάρκεια των γυρισμάτων.

«Όταν η Άννα Φιτζέραλντ πάτησε το πόδι της στο γραφείο μου, σκέφτηκα ότι πουλούσε κουλουράκια για φιλανθρωπικό σκοπό.» – Κάμπελ Αλεξάντερ

Ο Κάμπελ Αλεξάντερ είναι εκείνος που εκπροσωπεί νομικά την Άννα, ο χαρισματικός δικηγόρος που έχει αναλάβει την υπόθεσή της. Το ρόλο παίζει ο Άλεκ Μπόλντουιν και παρόλο που οι περισσότερες σκηνές στις οποίες παίζει στην ταινία είναι «βαριές» και εκτυλίσσονται στο δικαστήριο, στα διαλείμματα δεν σταματούσε να λέει ανέκδοτα και αστείες ιστορίες στο σκηνοθέτη και στους συμπρωταγωνιστές του. Ακούγεται ειρωνικό, αλλά ένα από τα πλεονεκτήματα της ταινίας, για τον Μπόλντουιν, ήταν ότι δεν ήταν κωμωδία.

«Παίζω σε ένα κωμικό σίριαλ, οπότε η ευκαιρία που είχα να κάνω ένα βαρύ, συναισθηματικό δράμα ήταν ιδιαίτερα ελκυστική για μένα.» Ο Μπόλντουιν περιγράφει το χαρακτήρα του ως «έναν δικηγόρο που έχει μεγάλη ιδέα για τον εαυτό του, που έχει γεμίσει με διαφημίσεις του γραφείου του όλη την πόλη και που ξέρει να ‘πουλά’ τον εαυτό του. Το θέμα είναι ότι για την Άννα αυτό ήταν αρκετό για να τον προσλάβει. Ουσιαστικά σκέφτεται: «Είσαι ο τύπος που βλέπω στη διαφήμιση στο λεωφορείο.» Αυτοί που μπορούν να δουν πέρα από την εικόνα, δεν θα τον προσελάμβαναν ποτέ. Όμως αυτό δεν ισχύει για ένα 11χρονο κορίτσι. Σε αυτό το κοινό, έχει απήχηση,» λέει γελώντας ο ηθοποιός.

Όταν η μήνυση της Άννα φέρνει στη επιφάνεια το πρόβλημα που αντιμετωπίζει η οικογένεια Φιτζέραλντ στην αίθουσα του δικαστηρίου, γνωρίζουμε τη δικαστή Ντε Σάλβο. Η Ντε Σάλβο αντιμετωπίζει και αυτή τα δικά της προσωπικά προβλήματα, οπότε η χρονική στιγμή που η Άννα επιλέγει για να κάνει τη μήνυση αποτελεί μία πρόκληση για αυτήν. Η Τζόαν Κιούζακ παίζει το ρόλο, που όπως αποκαλύπτει ο Τζόνσον ήταν αρχικά γραμμένος για έναν άντρα ηθοποιό.

«Η επιλογή της Τζόαν για το ρόλο της δικαστή Ντε Σάλβο ήταν μία εμπνευσμένη απόφαση του Νικ,» λέει ο παραγωγός. «Προφανώς, η Τζόαν είναι γνωστή για τους ρόλους της σε κωμωδίες. Αλλά ο Νικ είναι πολύ καλός στο να βρίσκει τον εντελώς μη-συμβατικό, αλλά εντελώς κατάλληλο ηθοποιό για τον κάθε ρόλο, και γι’ αυτό και όλες οι δουλειές τους παρουσιάζουν τέτοιο ενδιαφέρον.»

“Θέλω να πάω στην παραλία. Θέλω να δω τα κύματα.” — Κέιτ

Η ταινία «Η ΑΔΕΛΦΗ ΜΟΥ ΚΙ ΕΓΩ» γυρίστηκε εξολοκλήρου στο Λος Άντζελες. Οι τοποθεσίες των γυρισμάτων ήταν μεταξύ άλλων, το κέντρο της πόλης, οι παραλίες του Μαλιμπού και της Σάντα Μόνικα, αλλά και οι πλούσιες γειτονίες του Σαν Μαρίνο.

Όπου ήταν δυνατό, η παραγωγή αποφάσιζε τα γυρίσματα να γίνονται σε αληθινές τοποθεσίες, ώστε να υπογραμμίζεται ο ρεαλισμός που ο Κασσαβέτης θέλησε να προσδώσει στην ταινία. Η δουλειά του Καλέμπ Ντεσανέλ στη φωτογραφία ενίσχυσε και αυτή με τη σειρά της το νατουραλιστικό χαρακτήρα της ταινίας. Οι κινήσεις της κάμερας ήταν λιγοστές και ακολουθούσαν τις κινήσεις των ηθοποιών. Ορισμένες φορές, αυτός και ο Κασσαβέτης άφηναν όλη τη σκηνή να εκτυλιχτεί ακόμα και αν ήξεραν ότι θα χρησιμοποιούσαν μόνο ένα κομμάτι της, ώστε να εμψυχώσουν και να υποστηρίξουν τη δουλειά των ηθοποιών.

Οι υπεύθυνοι για τα μαλλιά, το μέικ απ και τα κοστούμια κινήθηκαν και αυτοί στην ίδια «ρεαλιστική» γραμμή. Η Σάρα Φιτζέραλντ, μία γυναίκα σε κρίση, επικεντρωμένη αποκλειστικά στη φροντίδα του παιδιού της, δεν έχει καθόλου χρόνο ή ενδιαφέρον για τον εαυτό της και η εμφάνισή της το αποδεικνύει αυτό περίτρανα. Τα ξανθά μαλλιά της φαίνεται ότι χρειάζονται βάψιμο και σχεδόν σε ολόκληρη της ταινία είναι αμακιγιάριστη.

Όμως στην περίπτωση της Κέιτ, η ομάδα του μακιγιάζ δούλεψε πολύ. Προκειμένου να είναι εμφανή τα σημάδια της ασθένειάς της και οι επιπτώσεις της ισχυρής φαρμακευτικής αγωγής που παίρνει, η Βασίλιεβα φορούσε φακούς επαφής που έκαναν τα ματιά της να φαίνονται κόκκινα και θολά, και μία ανεπαίσθητη στρώση μακιγιάζ που έκανε το δέρμα της να φαίνεται μουντό και τα μάτια της βαθουλωμένα, προσδίνοντάς της χλομάδα και αντικατοπτρίζοντας τη συνεχή εξασθένηση του οργανισμού της.

Αλλά, η μεγαλύτερη δοκιμασία και απόδειξη της αφοσίωσης στο ρόλο της, ήταν όταν η νεαρή ηθοποιός, που είχε μακριά ξανθά μαλλιά, αναγκάστηκε να ξυρίσει το κεφάλι της και τα φρύδια της. Όπως λέει και η ίδια, η όψη του κεφαλιού της χωρίς μαλλιά δεν προσεγγίζει ούτε κατά διάνοια τις δυσκολίες που είναι αναγκασμένοι να υπομείνουν οι ασθενείς με καρκίνο, αλλά σίγουρα ήταν μία αρχή στο να τους κατανοήσει.

«Το να ξυρίσω τα μαλλιά μου, ήταν μία παράξενη εμπειρία που με έπιασε απροετοίμαστη και με φόβισε. Μετά όμως συνειδητοποίησα ότι η Κέιτ είναι ‘όμορφη’ σαν χαρακτήρας και ότι τα να ξυρίσω το κεφάλι μου ήταν μία θυσία που έπρεπε να κάνω,» λέει η Βασίλιεβα.

Με βοήθησε, προσθέτει, το ότι μία από τις τεχνικούς συμβούλους της ταινίας, η 16χρονη Νικόλ Σουλτζ, η οποία έχει περάσει λευχαιμία, τώρα διαθέτει πλούσια, ξανθά μαλλιά.

«Δοκίμασε να ζητήσεις από ένα κορίτσι να ξυρίσει το κεφάλι του και τα φρύδια του για μία ταινία…Θα το θέσω ως εξής: Μου φαινόταν παράξενο και μόνο που το ζητούσα,» λέει ο Κασσαβέτης. «Αλλά δεν είναι ένα τυχαίο κορίτσι,» λέει για τη νεαρή του πρωταγωνίστρια.

Επειδή η Βασίλιεβα έπαιζε, παράλληλα με τα γυρίσματα της ταινίας, και στην τηλεοπτική σειρά «Medium», η παραγωγή της έφτιαξε μία περούκα την οποία φορούσε όταν έπαιζε στην τηλεόραση, μέχρι τα μαλλιά της να ξαναμακρύνουν. Η Βασίλιεβα δήλωσε ότι θα δωρίσει την περούκα αυτή στο Locks of Love, μία μη κερδοσκοπική οργάνωση που βοηθά εκείνους που χάνουν τα μαλλιά τους, λόγω ασθένειας. Η αλήθεια είναι ότι κατά τη διάρκεια της ταινίας χρησιμοποιήθηκαν πολλές περούκες για το ρόλο της Σοφίας, καθώς έπρεπε να τις αλλάζει, ανάλογα με το στάδιο της ασθένειας, στο οποίο βρισκόταν. Για το λόγο αυτό, η παραγωγή κρατούσε ειδικό πρόγραμμα «περούκας», ώστε να ξέρει ποια έπρεπε να φορέσει η Σοφία, ανάλογα με την κάθε σκηνή.

«Ένα από τα πράγματα στο οποίο δείξαμε ιδιαίτερη προσοχή, προκειμένου η ταινία να φαίνεται ρεαλιστική, είναι το να διαλέξουμε ηθοποιούς και κομπάρσους που εμφανίζονταν στις σκηνές του νοσοκομείου, οι οποίοι να μοιάζουν όσο το δυνατόν περισσότερο με τους ανθρώπους που πράγματι βλέπει κανείς σε αυτούς τους χώρους,» λέει ο Τζόνσον. «Και είχαμε αρκετούς ασθενείς που ήρθαν και συνεργάστηκαν δούλεψαν μαζί μας με διάφορους τρόπους και πραγματικά μας βοήθησαν να κατανοήσουμε πολλά πράγματα για την ταινία που γυρίζαμε.»

Σε όλη τη διάρκεια της παραγωγής της ταινίας, η Ιλιάνα Τζίστμαν και το ίδρυμά της, το Desi Geestman Foundation, μας έδωσαν πληροφορίες και συμβουλές για τα παιδιά με καρκίνο και για το πώς η ασθένεια επηρεάζει τόσο εκείνα, όσο και τις οικογένειές τους, τόσο σωματικά όσο και συναισθηματικά. Ο σκοπός του ιδρύματος είναι «να βελτιώσει την ποιότητα ζωής των παιδιών που πάσχουν από καρκίνο, και των οικογένειών τους. Το ίδρυμα προσφέρει ένα υποστηρικτικό περιβάλλον που ανακουφίζει το συναισθηματικό και οικονομικό τραύμα που έχουν υποστεί.» Η φιλανθρωπική οργάνωση έχει πάρει το όνομά της από την κόρη της κόρη της Ιλιάνα, ένα γενναίο 12χρονο κορίτσι που έδωσε μία σκληρή μάχη με το νευροβλάστωμα στο νοσοκομείο The City Hope. Η Ιλιάνα κανόνισε ώστε αρκετά από τα παιδιά που είχαν ευεργετηθεί από το ίδρυμά της να εμφανιστούν ως κομπάρσοι στην ταινία και να λειτουργήσουν ως πραγματικοί σύμβουλοι για τους ηθοποιούς και το συνεργείο.

Η Τζίστμαν ήταν παραπάνω από ευχαριστημένη από το αποτέλεσμα. «Όλα όσα περιγράφονται στη ταινία συμβαίνουν και στην πραγματικότητα, αλλά δέκα φορές χειρότερα. Ο Νικ μου είπε ότι ήθελε να κάνει την ταινία να φαίνεται όσο το δυνατόν πιο πραγματική γινόταν και με ρώτησε αν κάποια από τα παιδιά θα ήθελαν να συμμετάσχουν, διαβεβαιώνοντάς με ότι θα τύγχαναν τα αμέριστης φροντίδας και σεβασμού. Τα παιδιά πραγματικά απόλαυσαν τη γνωριμία και τη συνεργασία τους με όλους όσοι εργάστηκαν για την ταινία. Ο Νικ ήταν τόσο φιλικός μαζί τους και τους μιλούσε λες και ήταν συνομήλικός τους. Η Σοφία ήταν αξιαγάπητη και όλοι την αισθάνονταν σαν την καλύτερή τους φίλη. Τα παιδιά πραγματικά ήθελαν να γίνουν κομμάτι της ταινίας. Πήραμε κάποια σε ορισμένα γυρίσματα εκτός νοσοκομείου και αυτό ήταν για αυτά μία πραγματική περιπέτεια. Και αυτές οι περιπέτειες είναι τόσο σημαντικές για αυτά, επειδή το δικό τους ‘ταξίδι’ στο νοσοκομείο είναι ορισμένες φορές πολύ μοναχικό. Οπότε η ανάμιξή τους στης ταινία ‘φώτισε’ σε μεγάλο βαθμό τις ζωές τους,» προσθέτει η Τζίστμαν.

ΚΡΙΤΙΚΕΣ

ΣΠΥΡΟΣ ΘΩΜΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ-NOOZ.GR

Η τελευταία ταινία του Nick Cassavetes («Το Ημερολόγιο», «John Q.»), γιου του John Cassavetes και της Gena Rowlands, μπορεί να διαβάζετα στο χαρτί ως άκρως ενδιαφέρουσα υπόθεση αλλά στην οθόνη αποδεικνύεται τετριμμένη και κουραστική. Η «Αδερφή Μου Κι Εγώ», που βασίζεται στο bestseller της Jodi Picoult, παίρνει ένα έξυπνο και γαργαλιστικά σύγχρονο θέμα και το χρησιμοποιεί ως πρόσχημα για ένα κοινωνικό μελόδραμα που κάνει ό,τι μπορεί για να προκαλέσει ποταμούς δακρύων. Και το πετυχαίνει, επιστρατεύοντας όλα τα «δακρύβρεχτα» κλισέ, αδιαφορώντας πλήρως από ένα σημείο και μετά για την ηθική ή διαλεκτική πλευρά του εν λόγω ζητήματος. Η σκηνοθεσία του Cassavetes, που συνυπογράφει και το σενάριο, βαδίζει σε σταθερά μονοπάτια χωρίς πρόθεση να δώσει κάτι φρέσκο, με μοναδικό σκοπό τη συναισθηματική χειραγώγηση του θεατή. Ακόμα και οι βασικές ερμηνείες των Cameron Diaz, Jason Patric και Abigail Breslin χρησιμοποιούν μια προβλέψιμη παλέτα, με εξαίρεση τη νεαρή Sofia Vassilieva στο ρόλο της Kate, η οποία ξεγλιστρά επιδέξια από τις μελοδραματικές παγίδες που καραδοκούν σε κάθε της σκηνή.

Π.ΚΑΓΙΟΣ-ΤΑ ΝΕΑ

Τι κι αν η επιστήμη κάνει άλματα και γίνεται «αδίστακτη»; Όσο θα υπάρχουν… παλιοί άνθρωποι που γεννιούνται με τον παραδοσιακό τρόπο, τόσο το συναίσθημα και η αγάπη όσο και η ματαιοδοξία, η ανασφάλεια και η μικρότητα, δεν θα μας αφήνει να γίνουμε ρομποτάκια. Και στο οικογενειακό δράμα «Η αδελφή μου κι εγώ» («Μy sister΄s keeper») το δάκρυ πάει κορόμηλο και ευχαριστιέσαι ένα μελό που δεν υποτιμά τη νοημοσύνη σου.

Κατά το στόρι: η ζωή της Σάρας, του Μπράιαν Φιτζέραλντ και του μικρού τους γιου αλλάζει μια για πάντα όταν μαθαίνουν πως η δίχρονη κόρη τους, η Κέιτ, έχει λευχαιμία. Η μοναδική ελπίδα των γονιών είναι να κάνουν ακόμα ένα παιδί, το οποίο θα μπορέσει να σώσει τη ζωή της Κέιτ. Για κάποιους, αυτή η κίνηση θέτει πολλά ηθικά διλήμματα. Για τους Φιτζέραλντ όμως, και ειδικά για τη Σάρα, δεν υπάρχει άλλη επιλογή. Και αυτό που χρειάζεται για να γίνει αυτό πραγματικότητα είναι η Άννα. Ο δεσμός της Κέιτ (Σοφία Βασίλιεβα) και της Άννας (Άμπιγκεϊλ Μπρέσλιν) είναι πολύ πιο στενός απ΄ ό,τι μεταξύ των περισσότερων αδελφών. Παρά το ότι η Κέιτ είναι μεγαλύτερη, εξαρτάται από τη μικρότερη αδελφή της. Στην πραγματικότητα η ζωή της εξαρτάται εξ ολοκλήρου από τη ζωή της Άννας. Καθ΄ όλη τη διάρκεια της νεαρής ζωής τους, οι δύο αδελφές αναγκάζονται να υπομένουν διάφορες ιατρικές «δοκιμασίες» στα δωμάτια νοσοκομείων, γεγονός που ενισχύει τον στενό οικογενειακό δεσμό τους. Η Σάρα (Κάμερον Ντίαζ)- μια τρυφερή σύζυγος και μητέρα που άφησε την καριέρα της ως δικηγόρου για να φροντίσει την κόρη τηςαισθάνεται πολύ συχνά «εγκλωβισμένη» εξ αιτίας του δύσκολου ρόλου να σώσει την Κέιτ. Ο στοργικός της σύζυγος, Μπράιαν (Τζέισον Πάτρικ), φαίνεται συχνά αδύναμος και παθητικός μπροστά στη δύναμη και την αποφασιστικότητα που δείχνει η γυναίκα του. Και ο μοναδικός τους γιος, ο Τζέσι (Έβαν Έλινγκσον), φαίνεται πως είναι παραμερισμένος, καθώς η Άννα και η Κέιτ «κλέβουν την παράσταση».

Μέχρι που η Άννα, 11 χρονών πλέον, λέει «μέχρι εδώ!». Ζητώντας να πάρει την κατάσταση στα χέρια της, αναθέτει στον δικηγόρο Κάμπελ Αλεξάντερ (Άλεκ Μπόλντουιν) να την υπερασπιστεί, αρχίζοντας μια δικαστική διαμάχη που σπάει στα δύο την οικογένεια και που αφήνει «ξεκρέμαστη» τη ζωή της Κέιτ. Βασισμένη στο μπεστ σέλερ της Τζόντι Πίκουλτ, η ταινία «Η αδελφή μου κι εγώ» μιλάει (έμμεσα και… χολιγουντιανά) για το βιολογικό δικαίωμα του κάθε οργανισμού στον πλανήτη Γη να είναι αυτός και μόνο αυτός υπεύθυνος για τη μοίρα της ζωής του- πέρα από το δεδομένο φορτίο της κληρονομικότητας…- χωρίς παρεμβάσεις «σοφών» ιατρικών επιστημόνων και πανικόβλητων γονιών…

Piccolo passatempo : provate a fare un bilancio di voi stessi e della vostra vita, seguendo questo questionario e rispondendo SOLO con titoli di

-libri

- film

- canzoni.

Ecco il questionario e  le mie risposte: ho scelto i film.

1. Sei maschio o femmina?

L’UOMO CHE AMAVA LE DONNE ( Francois Truffaut)

2. Descriviti:

UN BORGHESE PICCOLO PICCOLO ( Mario Monicelli)

3. Cosa provano le persone quando stanno con te?

AMORE SENZA FINE ( Farnco Zeffirelli)

4. Descrivi la tua relazione precedente:

AMORE E GUERRA ( Woody Allen)

5. Descrivi la tua relazione corrente:

ANATOMIA DI UN RAPIMENTO ( Akira Kurosawa)

6. Dove vorresti trovarti?

UN TRANQUILLO POSTO DI CAMPAGNA (Elio Petri)

7. Come ti senti nei riguardi dell’amore?

PUNTO ZERO ( Richard Serafian)

8. Com’è la tua vita?

CASOTTO ( Franco Citti)

9. Che cosa chiederesti se avessi a disposizione un solo desiderio?

UNA PAZZA STORIA D’AMORE (Paul Mazursky)

10. Di’ qualcosa di saggio…

TUTTO A POSTO E NIENTE IN ORDINE (Lina Wertmuller)

11. Una musica:

ALLONSANFAN (Paolo e Vittorio Taviani)

12. Chi o cosa temi?

UNA VITA DIFFICILE ( Dino Risi)

13. Un rimpianto:

L’AMICA DELLE 5 E 1/2 ( Vincent Minnelli)

14. Un consiglio per chi è più giovane:

STRINGI I DENTI E VAI! ( Richard Brooks)

15. Da evitare accuratamente:

UNA MOGLIE ( John Cassavetes)

Director/Writer: John Cassavetes
Director of Photography: Mitch Breit, Al Ruban
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045274/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Woman_Under_the_Influence
Video/Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rgQIOxWeEk
Summary (from IMDB): Peter Falk is a blue collar man trying to deal with his wife’s mental instability. He fights to keep a semblance of normality in the face of her bizarre behavior, but when her actions affect their children, he has her committed. Written by BA Jacobson.

My take: I love, love, love this movie. Second time I’ve seen it and liked it even more this time. I’m a sucker for Cassavetes but even more so for Gena Rowlands, so game over for me. Dialogue and acting? Flawless. Such an honest view of a relationship. This time, I recognized similarities with “Rosemary’s Baby,” a film that featured Cassavetes as an actor. In the end of “A Woman Under the Influence,” the family almost treats Rowlands character like Farrow’s character – she is to be feared yet protected, silenced yet set free from the confines of her own mind. I could go on and on about his movie but I have over 40 more to watch so for the two people reading this, gotta go.

I think…no, wait, I’m fairly sure this clip is so goddamned awesome that I am sexually aroused.

(courtesy of this awesome blog)

The Riverside school bus IS in the middle of the road and I’m inside it, dreaming about a U-Turn that can’t happen anymore.  If only time was land based- I would walk to the past and work behind my own scenes, making Ends meet and act civilized towards each other until the next world approaches, approaches on foot.  “‘I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger,” right?  Or maybe it would be enough to just know what I know now.  I mean, how sure can you be?

One thing that’s sure as shit is deadlines, and thank god for them.  Apparently, I’m gonna write a story today and I think its going to be in the female perspective, something I haven’t tried before.  Hopefully, I’ll know how to do a woman justice.  I got some help from Heidegger yesterday, though.  He told me that our anxiety and fear is what individualizes us, forcing us out of the illusions and the comfort of the everyday and the everyone by reminding us of our mortality and our total responsibility over our own lives and actions.  The ending lesson there is a no-brainier, to seize the day and seize ourselves, living vigilantly open to the call of anxiety, as all it does is open doors of possibility for us to go deeper into ourselves and our world.  The fiction writing lesson there is that all a character needs to flesh out into a realistic, authentic individual is some anxiety to suffer, letting them find their own voice and manner by showing them working with and adapting through it.  Yeah, there’s a lot more to people than their problems, but when looking for a state of mind that can be a good place to start.

Lately, I’ve also been trying to take inspiration from movies directed by John Cassavetes, who has made some of the realest and most affecting movies I’ve ever seen.  All edges and mystery and love.  I’ve only seen ‘A Woman Under the Influence’ and ‘Opening Night,’ but both are staggering and so beautiful and I’m already planning on buying his Criterion box set with graduation money and wearing out the disks.  They’re the sort of movies I wish I could watch with an audience or a room full of family and friends so we can all live in it, understand, and be human together for a while.

That song, ‘The Pillow is My Threshold’ by Silver Jews,  really got to me today, really spoke my language.  I rejoice in songs (or anything else) that can remind me of the millions of raging lives and emotions that are spinning around me at all times, wandering the light and dark.  I want to feel and know them all, yet I know the closest I can get is to know myself.  Its just that easy.

“Somewhere in a foggy atlas
Lookout mountain, lookout sea
First life takes time, then time takes life
Now the next move’s up to me

Because the pillow that I dream on
Leads to some fantastic glory
It’s a threshold of a world
I can’t ignore”

How (and How Not) to Do it:
An Open Letter to the Next Generation of Filmmakers.

By Ray Carney.

Carney is professor of Film and American Studies, and head of the Film Studies Program at Boston University, as well as author of more than ten books, including the critically acclaimed The Films of John Cassavetes and The Films of Mike Leigh, both published by Cambridge University Press. (Check out the Website http://www.cassavetes.com for further essays, articles, interviews, publication updates, etc.) The following ten “anti-rules” of filmmaking from Carney run counter to almost every conventionally held belief regarding the “correct” way to make movies. When I recently met Belgian film critic Alfons Engelen, another proponent of creativity in filmmaking, he reminded me that Carney wasn’t alone in his approach. “Cinema is only one hundred years old. So only a dozen letters of the film alphabet are known,” said Engelen while we awaited the next screening at Figueira da Foz International Film Festival in Portugal. “Therefore, look for something new, never done before. As a filmmaker, cameraman, actor or actress, editor, make something new, never done before… fresh.”

In response to several interviews I have given attacking Hollywood filmmaking, a number of readers have asked me if I could provide a more positive statement. In a word, now that I’ve hatched-murdered the studios, could I offer a few rules on how to do it right? I hesitated at first, since as far as I am concerned, rules are the problem with most of the movies we now see. The shortcomings of Hollywood is that its confections are whipped up from recipes (you know: a dash of romance blended into a cup of suspense with a dollop of social relevance thrown on top to create the perfect post-dinner entertainment). I had no desire to offer my services as a French pastry-chef of independent cinema. Real art is not created from formulas. No matter how fancy the name we give them (“story structure,” “creating a character,” the “three-act screenplay”), rules and formulas are ways of avoiding what art is really about. That’s why I initially thought a how-to-do-it essay was a bad idea, but after mulling it over, I decided that maybe there was something worth saying. So, for anyone who is interested, I hereby offer ten anti-rule rules.

1. Accept no imitations.

Imitate no one and nothing. I teach university film courses. Most of them are devoted to screening and discussing cinematic masterworks: Renoir’s Rules of the Game, Dreyer’s Ordet, Ozu’s Tokyo Story, De Sica’s Bicycle Thief, Rosellini’s Voyage in Italy. But sometimes I wonder if seeing these films doesn’t do more harm than good to the young filmmakers who are my students. The problem is that too many of them seem to take the wrong lesson away from the courses. They think I show them classics so that they can go off and make movies that look like the ones I screen. They think I want them to weave spaces and bodies together the way Renoir does in Rules of the Game, or to keep looking around and behind their characters, through windows, into doorways, and around corners, the way De Sica does in Bicycle Thief, or to slow events down, silence the characters, and induce meditative states the way Ozu does in Tokyo Story. The right lesson, of course, is precisely the opposite one. I show masterpieces not to persuade students to look like these movies, but to inspire them to dare to look utterly and completely like themselves. That’s the lesson all great art teaches us. De Sica, Dreyer, Renoir, and Ozu didn’t get to be great artists by imitating someone else, by making movies that resembled the ones they had seen, but by being brave enough to break all of the then-established rules in order to express their own distinctive, unique, personal visions of life. They teach us the value not of imitation, but of resisting influences, even their own. And they teach us how hard it is to do that – how hard it is to create a style that will be true to our own vision of life, and how bizarre and idiosyncratic such a style will always look (at least at first blush). Audiences jeered these masterworks when they were first screened.

2. Film what you really are.

One of the reasons Hollywood films can get away with being so fraudulent is that most of them are set on a fantasy island populated with characters who bear no resemblance to anyone who ever lived on planet Earth. Dare to make a movie about yourself. It doesn’t, of course, have to be true to the superficial details of your life (thought that wouldn’t hurt), but at least make it deeply true to your honest feelings and beliefs, your genuine doubts and uncertainties, your actual interests and fears. Dare to film what you really are, what you really feel, what you really see around you. Don’t be afraid of being too personal. Your most private emotions, most secret puzzlements, most idiosyncratic obsessions are the only legitimate subject of your art. That’s another lesson the masterworks teach us.

A further reason to hold tight to your actual experiences and feelings to avoid the clichés that lurk everywhere waiting to entrap you and your characters. As soon as you take one step away from your actual life, your work is in danger of turning into a cartoon or a soap opera. It’s easy for Spielberg to slide into sentimental pieties when he presents what other people, in another country, felt and suffered fifty years ago. What would keep him honest would be to show what he himself actually feels like when he goes to lunch to close a big deal, or how he treats his wife and children that evening if it falls through. The Hemmingway-parented bullshit detector is that much more sensitive if your characters and situations are close to your own life. It’s just too easy to fool yourself, to cheat of exaggerate for effect, if your movie takes place in a galaxy far away. Make sure there is no “them” in your movie. It should be all “you.” Make sure you are as kind to your characters (or as hard on them) as you would be on yourself. Make sure they are as interesting and complex (and self-justifyingly self-deluded) as you are. Let them never think they are doing anything wrong, just as you never do.

A corollary is that your characters should be at least as intelligent and self-aware as you are. Half the movies in Hollywood would evaporate if a character simply asked himself why he is behaving in such an idiotic way. Every character ever played by Schwarzenegger or Stallone would stop dead in his tracks and sign up for counseling if he were allowed to have one second of normal self-awareness. Why am I lugging this bazooka around anyway? Why do I feel such anger towards everyone? What did my parents do to me to make me feel this way? These are, of course, Neanderthal examples. But why do characters even in movies by allegedly highbrow directors (Woody Allen, Mike Nichols, Steven Soderbergh) invariably understand less about themselves and their true situations than the audience does? Why are they all so limited? It’s time we had a few characters who were smarter, more sensitive, more morally complex than the average viewer is. Why do we need movies that make us feel superior? It’s time we had a few characters who humble or chasten us, who don’t yield to trashy journalistic understandings of what makes us tick. Look at Rossellini’s General Della Rovere or Dreyer’s Gertrud for illustrations.

3. Film what you don’t know.

Does not contradict the preceding: though if it did, it wouldn’t really make any difference. I only mean that there is no point in writing, casting, directing, and editing a film if you know in advance where you are going to come out, how you feel about your characters and events, and what it all means. If you can storyboard your film, save your time (and that of your actors and crew), skip the shooting, and publish the storyboard. There is no need to make the movie. If you don’t learn anything, no one else will either. If you don’t change your feelings about your characters and events as you go along, your audience won’t either. If your mind isn’t twisted into pretzels, theirs won’t be either. If your heart isn’t torn and conflicted by the situations your characters are in, you haven’t created complicated enough situations. You’ve reduced life to the “lite” experiences televisions or the newspapers give us.

Your movie should help viewers see things about their lives that they didn’t realize before they went into it. Of course, learning something, because forced out of your mental and emotional ruts, is precisely what never happens in Hollywood films. Movies like Pulp Fiction, L.A.Confidential, and Wild Things represent a button-pushing sense of art where the only goal is to force the viewer to jump through a set of pre-programmed emotional hoops. Art becomes a game of emotional tiddlywinks where you’re judged not on whether anybody actually got anything valuable out of the whole experience, but on finesse points – on how well you keep the nonsense moving right along. The director and producers decide what points they are going to make before they begin. They cast, shoot, and edit the movie so as to be sure to make them. They audience goes in and “gets” them. Then the critics come along and assign marks for how well they did it all. The reviews of these movies remind me of the chestnut about the comedian’s convention: A comedian calls out number 43 and everybody laughs. Another gets up and calls out number 12; there is even louder laughter. A third calls out number 37; nobody laughs. Explanation: Some people just don’t know how to tell a joke.

There experiences in these films are canned. Nobody involved in them – from the writer and director to the actors and editors – actually learn anything new. No one changes his mind. No one is forced out of his or her old patterns of understanding. They are vast emotional recycling operations. You put clichés in; you get clichés out. The only sermons the director or his viewers stumble on are the one’s he’s already cleverly hidden under his own stones when he began. It’s the difference between the way Picasso painted and filling in the outlines in a colouring book.

That’s not art. That’s not even good conversation. All valuable acts of expression are acts of exploration. (Even a minor one like writing this piece. Why would I waste my time doing if if I already knew in advance where my argument would take me?) Film the parts of your life you don’t understand in order to try to understand them. Film the aspects of your dealings with others where you don’t know what went wrong (or whether anything went wrong). Use film to blaze a trail through the emotional jungle we all live in. Consciousness cannot precede expression. Every movie Tarkovsky and Cassavetes ever made was an attempt to understand a part of their experience that they didn’t understand before they began it. Along with spoken language, art is one of the greatest inventions in the history of the Universe for discovering the meaning of our lives, our times, our culture.

A corollary: Dare to fail – abysmally on occasion. If you function as a genuine explorer, you can never know in advance where you’ll come out (or if you’ll come out anywhere valuable). It’s always safer to cook from a recipe, and always risky to throw the book away, but that is the only way you’ll ever make anything new. Like any other mass-produced product, if Hollywood films never rise above a certain average level of achievement, by the same virtue they never fall very far below it either. With a non-standardised approach, nothing is guaranteed. Your film may be a disaster. It may not work out. But that is the case with all truly creative experiments – Charlie Parker’s solos, Paul Taylor’s dances, Einstein’s late theorems. Working the way a documentary filmmaker does, discovering your purpose and meanings as you go along, necessarily means performing without a safety net. But the greatest art is always made by taking the greatest chances. The road not taken is the only path along which real discoveries can be made (which is why imitating yourself is as deadly as imitating someone else).

4. A movie should be at least as strange as life.

I don’t know about everyone elses experiences, but the emotional lives of myself and the people I know are stranger and more complex than anything I’ve ever seen in Hollywood films. Their characters are too logical, knowing, and articulate by half. They have clear motives and intentions and act in accordance with them. If they have problems, they know what they are, and have game plans for dealing with them. They execute complex courses of action in pursuit of a definite goal. I don’t know anyone in life who is this clear about things – including myself. I don’t have intentions, motives, and goals in this way. I don’t know what I really want most of the time. I don’t understand my emotions. I don’t know why I do or feel most of the things I do. When I am in real emotional trouble, I am the last one to realize it. Having a real problem is not knowing you have it. (Think of your former boyfriend or girlfriend for confirmation of this.) I don’t have a road map for where I’m going. I usually don’t even know where I have gotten to until long after I have arrived. The people I know (including myself) are more mixed up, more contradictory in their behaviour, more changing in their feelings than characters ever are in the movies. Who of us is a character in the Hollywood way? (Dear reader, what is your character?) Even the most ordinary life is stranger and less rational than these movies assume.

When Hollywood wants to present a character who behaves less “normally,” it gives us a hockey masked slasher, has Jack Nicholson turn into the Joker or a Wolfman, or has Jim Carrey do one of his wild and crazy impersonations. But these characters separate the weirdness from everyday life too much. They make it seem too exceptional and rare and fleeting. They imagine our strangeness too externally and superficially. Our casual remarks cut more deeply than Freddy Krueger’s razor-fingers. The masks we wear are much scarier than Jason’s – and not removable. Our animal natures can be far more savage and unpredictable than a wolf’s. Our emotional lives are much spookier and more mysterious than anything in a John Carpenter movie. You can’t pound a stake through this aspect of experience. You can’t lock it up at the end of the movie. Everyone I have ever known – landlords, bosses, businessmen, parents, lovers, and friends – has an interior life that is knottier and more out of control than Hannibal Lecter’s. Capture some of the real strangeness of our emotional lives. If you don’t think it can be done, look at a tape of Cassavetes’s Faces or Tom Noonan’s The Wife. The kinks and twists in their characters’ psyche put a horror movie’s to shame.

5. Leave the ‘toons to Disney.

It’s a truism that most American feature films and the performances in them are indistinguishable from cartoons. But the problem is deeper than our cultural infatuation with superheros or the cults that have grown up around Robert DeNiro’s or Sharon Stone’s cartoon versions of acting. Even most so-called serious movies (from Easy Rider to Thelma & Louise, Malcolm X, and Schindler’s List) are dumbed down to the level of comic books. Characters are generic; situations are archetypal and representative; and the morality is as black-and-white as a children’s book. The actors might as well wear signs around their necks telling us how we are supposed to interpret them. The audience is more or less told what to know and how to feel every step of the way.

American film needs to move beyond the Boy’s book and Harlequin romance stage. We need films where characters are not generalizations and stereotypes, but particular, prickly individuals. We need figures who are neither good nor bad, neither heroes nor villains, whose motives are impure and mixed. We need films where the drama is not premised on external conflicts, but on internal confusions and ambivalences. Why can’t we have movies about characters that viewers will not be able to figure out and situations they will not be able to make up their minds about? We need movies that go into the grey and fuzzy places – movies that capture the murky irresolution of life as it is actually lived. We need scenes that explore the in-between places of life, where there is no clear problem and no clear solution. We need scenes that are pitched at tonal in-between places, scenes that don’t allow the audience the luxury of figuring them out too easily or settling back into simple relationship to them. If you think it can’t be done, check out a competent stage production of any of Chekhov’s plays. He made a career of doing it.

6. Make adult movies.

Another way to put the preceding is to say that it’s time we recapture the “adult movie” category from the pornographers. There are enough movies for teenagers. It’s high time we had some genuine adult films – movies made by adults, about adults, for adults, where there is more on the character’s minds than getting laid or stoned or shot. One way to go about making adult movies would simply be to leave our everything that is there strictly to suck in teenage boys (the nudity, sex, car chases, tough-guy theatrics, shoot-outs, thriller plots) or girls (the lovey-dovey romance stuff, dating game comedy, mood-music melodrama, and soap operatics).

The standard reply is that a movie that lacks these sort of things wouldn’t be “entertaining” enough to sell tickets. But it’s a circular argument: what is being invoked to justify childish movies is a child’s definition of entertainment. We need to forget about being entertaining in this sense, and redefine entertainment to include sophisticated adult interests. Complex adult social interactions, the play of adult emotions, the difficulties of a difficult life are the most interesting things in the world with an adult perspective.

Our movies are too simple, too obvious, too easy, and ultimately too boring. An adult movie will necessarily be hard and challenging, just as all real adult relationships are. Kids may want things easy, but an adult knows that no important experience (or person) yields up its meanings casually or lightly, and that the more it resists you or forces you out of your habitual patterns, the more exciting and valuable it is. That’s as true in art as it is in life. Great works necessarily make demands on us; they test us; because they force us to enter into new states of awareness, new ways of knowing. You can’t experience a really great work of art in a relaxed or passive way. You can’t listen to Bach on your back. He forces you to answer his energies with your own. He rouses you to activity. That state of tension, engagement, and activity is not an accidental side-effect of a great work, but the very heart and soul of what all important art does.

The moral of the story is that there is no reason to apologise if a viewer has to see your movie two, three, or more times, or to struggle for months or years to work through it emotionally. I’ve seen Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice and Stalker at least ten times each, and still can’t get comfortable with them, am still puzzled and mystified by aspects of them. That’s not what’s wrong with them, but what’s right – like the best, most challenging, exciting experiences and people we come up against in life. Even if it’s not true in aerobics, in art (as in life) “no pain, no gain” really is a reality. New experiences, fresh insights, new points of view are going to leave your emotional muscles a little sore at first. They’ll have you panting to keep up with them. It has to do with the way our brains are wired. Our emotions are inertial. Our hearts always rest on the last experience. Every genuinely new way of seeing and feeling is disorienting – because it does brain surgery on us.

Of course, given our channel-surfing, easy-listening culture, many people will still prefer Happy Meal movies. They may storm out of your film muttering about its incomprehensibility; but what if they do? You are better off without them. If people aren’t willing to exert themselves to the degree the work demands, they can’t have the experience you want them to have even if you physically chain them to their seats (or psychologically chain them by adding sex scenes, shoot-outs, and suspense). If they are determined to lie on their backs, they are not going to hear Bach anyhow. If you play Beethoven to the supermarket crowd, you succeed only in turning the Ninth Symphony into Muzak. You can’t make someone have an experience they aren’t ready to have. You can’t give someone an emotional gift they are not mature enough to receive. They may need to grow up some more, live a little more, or fall in love before they are ready for your film. And, of course, they may never be ready for it; but that is their loss, not yours. Don’t dumb it down in an attempt to reach everyone, or you will lose the very viewers you should most care about reaching.

7. Forget sets, props, locations, costumes.

Insides are where it’s at. Hollywood spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year getting the cars, furniture, haircuts, and period music right. Spielberg thinks nothing of constructing an entire city block or a country estate in order to re-create a past era. Unfortunately, in his obsession with the authenticity of objects and events, he overlooks the fact that the only thing that matters is emotional reality. The people who make these movies are clearly more comfortable dealing with props and costumes than feelings, which is why they will fuss over the most minute details of the sets, but don’t see the emotional fraudulence of the scenes that take place in them.

Take sex scenes as an example. I’ve seen hundreds of them in Hollywood movies, but I don’t think there has been even one where the woman was embarrassed by the size of shape of her breasts or hips or where the man was anxious about his ability to perform. I’ve seen scores of depictions of one-night stands, but I’ve never seen a single film where the two strangers express a profound sense of emptiness, regret, shame, or violation after making love. I shouldn’t even use the word love. There is lots of glycerin, lust, and infatuation in these movies of course, but where is the trust, admiration, devotion, self-sacrifice, or deep emotional vulnerability that constitutes real adult love.

What is true of romantic attraction is true of the other feelings in these works. They are cheap, plastic knockoffs of real emotions – with only the faintest, superficial resemblance to the actual ones. (It doesn’t take a Hamlet to make us realize that even reptilian emotions like anger and revenge are more complicated than the Hollywood versions of them – more tangled up in double- and triple-thinking.) The feelings in these films are as clichéd and unreal as the plots or the mood music on their soundtracks. The characters bear about as much resemblance to humans as computer animations do.

Ninety-nine percent of the American movies released in a given year simply recycle five or ten of these fake emotions over and over again – canned, condensed, instant anger, revenge, lust, fear, romance, and a few others. They are like well-worn counterfeit coins passed from hand to hand, from film to film, as promissory notes for the real thing. The very fact that we can assign these emotions names at all proves their fraudulence. Our emotional life never comes to us in such simple bundles. It can never be labeled like this (since it is not static, but a continuous flowing and melting transformation). Most of the feelings we have every day of our lives are utterly unnameable and indescribable. We aren’t even conscious of most of them.

All of this, needless to say, represents a great opportunity to independent filmmakers. The artist moves beyond the known world of clichés, exploring the emotional wildernesses that are not on our charts. He or she moves into the “here there be dragons” sections of our souls and maps the true emotional geography of the present, reporting back his or her findings for the benefit of the rest of us.

8. Plot – not.

One of the most limiting aspects of American films is that the plot is all that matters at virtually every stage of the process. Movies are pitched, scripted, and budgeted on the basis of the cleverness of their plots. In the directing and editing process, characterizations, emotional nuance, mood, and psychology are thrown to the winds to keep the plots zipping along from event to event. Filmmakers like Spielberg actually pride themselves on “telling a good story” in this children’s-book sense of the phrase. The great works of literature – Huckleberry Finn, Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s plays – are not reducible to their plots; only hacks like O. Henry and Agatha Christie confused narrative art with “telling a good story” in Spielberg’s sense. No one ever sat through the classics of cinema for their plots. Who ever watched The Passion of Joan of Arc for its plot? Reduced to their plots, Ozu’s movies are hokey melodramas. Plot has almost nothing to do with a great film’s complex pleasures.

What capitalistic, materialistic myth have we enslaved ourselves to? Why do we think life is about achieving something or attaining a goal? Why do we think it’s about getting somewhere or doing something? Why do we make movies about actions and events? Whose life is reducible to its events? Whose soul can be summed up by its actions? What we are is infinitely more interesting than what we do. Dare to make a film that shows that people are more interesting than the trivial events taking place around them. Show how what we do to ourselves emotionally is more interesting than anything anyone else does to us. Dare to push the pause button on the narrative and let your actors actually interact with each other. This is different from merely turning them loose to chew up the scenery in the Meryl Streep, Harvey Keitel, or Nick Cage way. Interaction is subtle, nuanced, and responsive; not flamboyant, ostentatious, and scene-stealing. Dare to make a movie where everything is not all tied up narratively with pink ribbons in the final scenes. Why does everything have to be resolved and explained? Make a movie that is narratively inconclusive or open to different interpretations.

A strictly personal request: make a tragic film. America is the culture that invented the sitcom and the happy face, and we seem to have lost sight of the enormous expressive power – and truth – of tragedy. Tragedy has almost disappeared as a cinematic form in America. Suffering and loss reveals things about our hearts and souls that no happy ending ever can. In rewarding their central characters with money, power, fame, and success at their ends, our films tell us a lie about life. Why deny your own emotional experience – your endless frustrations and setbacks – this way? These films define life’s value too economically, too externally, too materialistically. In its deepest wellsprings, life is not about attaining rewards (or punishments), but about testing our spirits, deepening our souls, and enriching our consciousness. Make a film about that – a film in which a character may lose the world but gain her soul.

9. Why should your movie look like a movie?

Who says you have to use master shots or shot-reverse shots or close-ups or music on the soundtrack or anything else that other films have? It’s another occupational hazard of being a film teacher that after I spend a few weeks with students some of the possibilities of cinematic syntax, many of them think I am telling them that they should shoot their films like Hitchcock, light them like Sternberg, edit them like Eisenstein, or score them like Bernard Hermann. What I’m actually trying to teach them is the lesson a novelist or poet presumably learns from reading great writers: to invent new forms of language to express their own particular thoughts and feelings. Don’t hesitate to bend the form past the breaking point if it will allow you to catch the little wiggle in life that only you see and feel. No more than there is a right way to paint a painting or score a symphony is there a correct way to light or shoot a movie, a best way to edit it, a right or wrong way it should look. Hollywood has brainwashed us by flooding the market with movies that look, sound, and feel almost identical. But the question to ask is why would anyone want their movie to look like a Hollywood one? Why would you want your hand-crafted personal expression to look like it rolled off an assembly line? It’s the uniqueness of our voices that makes us interesting; the most boring voices in the world are those of professionally trained radio announcers. Let your own squeaky, twitchy, nervous voice emerge; don’t polish and smooth the roughness away.

A filmmaker friend of mine, Robert Kramer, made a movie called Starting Place. There are many amazing and powerful moments in it, most of which represent completely new imaginings of the possibilities of what you can say on film. There is an extended conversation in which Kramer repeatedly cuts away from the principle figure’s face to show views of his feet and hands (and not as a twitchy indication of guilt in the pseudo-Freudian cliché 60 Minutes employs). There is another conversation in which Kramer intercuts tights close-ups of a woman’s eyebrows and hairline and ears rather than showing her whole face. What Kramer does is simply what every artist does: he gets us to see with fresh eyes, to think and feel in new ways. But to do that, he has to fracture and dislocate conventional cinematic forms of presentation. He must reinvent language to make it capable of carrying the meaning he wants it to bear. It’s a question of who is the master, and the true artist is always the master of the form he uses. And make no mistake about it: If you don’t use the forms, they will use you. If you don’t twist and torture them, and beat them up, they will twist and torture you and beat you up. If you don’t ride them, they will ride you. They will homogenize and blandify your ideas. They will bend and flatten your eccentric wiggles and curves into their own cookie-cutter shapes and mass-produced meanings.

10. Who’s afraid of the dark?

Why do movies have establishing shots? Why does mood music tell us what characters are thinking and feeling? Why are characters’ goals and intentions made visible? Why must everything be explained? Life isn’t like this. I don’t know what people I talk to are thinking. I can’t see inside their hearts and read their minds. Why do we expect to be able to do that in our movies?

In fear of losing viewers, Hollywood explains more or less everything. The goal is not to leave viewers in the dark for a single minute. It’s why most Hollywood movies are improved by catching them on television a half-hour or so after they have begun. Characters and events become much more fascinating when we can’t figure them out. Why do we want things in our movies to be clear? Why do we want actions, events, and outcomes to be logical and rational (since so much of life is not this way)? Why do we insist on knowing, knowning, knowing so much about everyone and everything? Life is full of mysteries, darkness, unknowns, randomness. What we are is, of course, the greatest mystery of all.

A little dark would be preferable to this blinding insight. Make a movie where people’s surfaces are as opaque, their insides are invisible, as they are in life. Make a movie where people don’t progress step by step toward goals. Make a movie where the ending does not clear everything up. Read The Sacred Fount or The Awkward Age if you want to see it done in words. Cherish the mystery of experience. Respect what can never be known – even about those closest to you: friends, relatives, and lovers. In a word, honor life.

That’s ten, and as good a place as any to stop. The perceptive reader will have detected long before now that these ten rules are really only one rule repeated ten times: Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Which leads to one meta-rule that overrides all of the others: Violate any of these rules rather than betray the truth.