As I hate the very idea of trying to recapture or define something that is quite obviously beyond words (and because I thought watching this film a fourth time could be for pleasure thank you very much), I'm going to be as brief as I possibly can. If you really want a headful of what I fancy about this magical film, read my notes from the third viewing or, in fact, the top ten list justification which, however limiting I feel it is, doesn't completely sell my reflection short. My wife and I watched 'Eyes Wide Shut', noting the major components of comedy, set design and symbolism (particularly color). There are lines of dialogue in this film that are clearly grounded in hilarity. The sequence, especially,  where Nicole Kidman is trying to make Tom Cruise jealous - or, rather, her character, Alice, is attempting such a feat - to us, came off as completely funny. Yeah, there's the marvelously engrossing moment when she tells of her fantasy with the naval officer; but there's also the moments when Cruise is clearly trying to articulate in the haze of narcotic glee. And they're funny. Moving on.

Every set is gorgeous. Trying a bit of deep focus - e.g., following the aesthetic rather than the story - we were able to appreciate every set the way I feel they were meant to be adored : as artwork apart and one with the film. The thematic clutter of art and it's burrowed place in American society (more importantly, American high society) can easily be interpreted in the meticulous nature of these key settings : Ziegler's house (both occurrences logged and contrasted : the party is an impersonal, yet warm setting, complete with a background light that wraps itself around the characters, making them feel more comfortable than they are - and - the confrontation betwixt Harford and Ziegler, a room that seems to grow and grow and grow,  as the situation becomes more and more clear, the characters seem more and more lost in their surroundings, like the relationship between ants from a normal distance and people from an extremely high vantage point.), the house where the orgy takes place (a beautiful place where dark, sinister things go on. Another contrast that questions high society as an operation : why an orgy and why there?) and finally, the sets that are New York's streets, not so much stunning as they are fascinating, since they take place entirely on a sound stage.

And finally, as I've not read the chapter on 'Eyes Wide Shut' in 'Stanley Kubrick, Director : A Visual Analysis' (a marvelous book by Alexander Walker, Sybil Tyler and Ulrich Ruchti - the kind of intellectual nerdiness that I gobble up with a spoon); my wife and I were attempting to define the reds and blues in the film. Red ran the gamut from passion to fire to anger, to an even deeper slice; as on the carpet in the orgy sequence, Ziegler's billiard table and the stop sign when Cruise is being pursued - all warnings : red stands out to keep Harford from doing wrong? I'm just theorizing here. Blue, the cool color is passive, weak, etc. We were more concerned with the red.

I've taken up enough of your time, I'm certain. Expect a decade list in a few weeks, seriously.

Let me tell you of the emotional gamut - the diametrical seasons of thought that occurred to me while watching what is widely referred to as the very first of the French New Wave films. Claude Chabrol's film concerns Francois, who returns to a small French town after surviving a spot on his lung. His friend Serge, after witnessing his child's stillbirth, has become a loathsome and violent drunk, striking out at his wife Yvonne, who happens to be pregnant again. Her sister, Maria, after a brief affair with Francois - is raped by Gamoud, who was always thought to be her father, but it turns out is not - and rapes her because Francois points out that he's not really her papa. The music is constantly reminding us that this is a message movie (the orchestra seems more fit to play over the images of an after school special than a mid-century French film) - maybe because of the strong subject matter, such an alarmingly silly score was necessary to persuade French censors to let the film pass into release - maybe it's just there to create some sort of rich balance between the  melodramatic text and it's wonderfully literary subtext. Either way, 'Le Beau Serge' is full of the technique of the French New Wave - it takes it's own liberties with master shots and bleak fades, cool looking angles and brilliantly etched tracking shots. Eventually, it called to mind the redemptive tones of 'Magnolia' - sans the wondrous pureness of that film ('Le Beau Serge' is deeply cynical) - wherein all the characters go through a change and Chabrol makes a conscious choice to let the audience be satisfied by their respective epiphanies (Paul Thomas Anderson was equally as conscious of such a gift), simply by making them overstated and worth beholding. It's a tough movie to get through - it's extremely downtrodden - but as the famous first that it is, it braved a new world boldly and without reproach. (The other film by Claude Chabrol showcased on TCM's 'Directors of the French New Wave : A Revolution Caught on Film' series this month is : 'Les Bonnes Femmes', 1960, 105 minutes; airing Friday, September 15 @ 11:30 pm)

Another in the brash and extremely painful series of movies that were once sincere in my naive "youth" days, but now seem unctuous and silly. Found myself doing a great bit of laughing, but also a bit of humble dealing, as I deeply admire the way the film smoothes the star quality of Brad Pitt into something positive. Nicely diametrical, seeing as he's the only character in the film that even remotely close to being developed - but he's also the most attractive, the most interesting and, maybe, as I'd always felt the scales were balanced (they're not), the best part of a movie that's achingly ridiculous and often, a cheap and tawdry TV movie. Luckily, it's Zwick who knows how to keep it moving in the face of all that : arresting vistas, visceral action sequences (gratuitous slow-mo included) and soft, likable romance. All the afternoon TV stuff is floating around - but it's sorta balanced by how obtuse it seems that there'd be so many rugged and survivalist tinges to it's back story. Even if it might be a guilty pleasure on some levels - and just downright guilty on other levels - it's still as close to a glossy star adventure epic as has been attempted in recent years (see Pitt in the same kind of film, 'Seven Years in Tibet', which I also like - believe it or not).

What opened with a groan on my part that a film made with such browning, unattractive film stock and such a limiting setting (nearly all of the film takes place in and around one estate) blossomed into one of the more entertaining, if rewarding pieces of social filmmaking I've seen. Psychologically vain Adrian goes to stay at his friend Rodolphe's estate for three weeks while his girlfriend, whom he pledges not to cheat on, jets to London on "business". He and his friend Daniel pledge to do as little as possible as they've cooked up countless theories on the productivity of laziness. Beautiful strategy by Rohmer at this point, allowing the inevitable temptation of young Heydey, a seemingly open-and-shut collector of sexual experiences (hence, the title), to be tease her conflict into Adrian as he mopes around the house for days creating a routine and all the while, wondering to himself about the when and where Heydey will appear to interrupt him. When she and he finally do lock horns, passively of course, it's a struggle to figure out honestly which of them truly wants the other. Adrian is constantly musing on the soundtrack (it's maybe one of a handful of films I've seen told in the first person that don't really feel like they're purposefully the story of the narrator) that she's out to possess him as one of her conquests (a role reversal that proves to work so beautifully), while Heydey struts around in skimpy clothing, staying out late at night with different partners and generally driving Adrian mad with sexual desire - or is she? The film drives hard at the differences between charm and lust, sex and friendship, love and infatuation, it even takes a good-hearted stab and hypothesizing at the age old "right and wrong" question. And on the contrary to my original expectation and judgement, Rohmer's film, while comprised almost exclusively of dialogue, manages to be one of the most entertaining and literary films I've seen this year. I look forward to seeing the other five of his "moral tales", the films he up and decided would make the mark for him.
(The other film by Eric Rohmer showcased on TCM's 'Directors of the French New Wave : A Revolution Caught on Film' series this month is : 'My Night at Maud's' , 1969, 111 minutes; airing Friday, September 22 @ 11:00 pm)

Having already had the argument once this week that books are nearly always better than the films they spawn - and having realized why I push people to read books instead of watching films (simply because if anything can be better than a film, I am at a complete loss to comprehend it and it must be worth recommending - like a thrill ride). Then along comes 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge', which I read in tenth grade - and was now faced with reading again in college. This is a horrific and truly well written story, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. Following, one assumes, would be a screen adaptation which should clearly have something more to offer us, something from the director's imagination that we didn't grasp. It should not be a literal approach brewing inside the text of a very, very figurative book. For example : the scenes of Peyton escaping, wrangling out of his restrictions, swimming, climbing onto the sand, running - all these things lose their gusto as mere indexing methods. Without the piling plausibility clues in the text (the pulsating fire, the burning in his brain, etc.), this fantasy not only seems too literal, but it's almost too hard for the necessity. It needs to be soft, like only the syntax and word choice can allude to. It needs to carry a fantasy all the way into the painful reality of the rope snapping in the final seconds. And while my call for this to be full of color and completely silent may be too long a stretch - the only really vivid moments of this short film come when music is introduced. They heighten the scene in a blatantly artificial way. When the final shot of Peyton reaching his wife cuts to his life ending on the bridge, via the noose, it's not the beautiful realization of Bierce's splintering of time - it's merely a shocking jolt with nothing attached to it. Again, if you can't in some way improve on - or change the direction of a story ('A Simple Plan' and 'Eyes Wide Shut' are prime examples of films that do this correctly), why bother?

Nothing follows more than the slow, building intellectual progression of perception than that of a film I've seen in high school and chose to revisit in college. The special relationship between social filmmaking and sympathetic simplicity, in the case of Neo-realism is that the director is allowed the illusion of objectivity without ever having to stick with objectivity. In other words, these films are as close to scripted documentaries as you can get without bleeding into fiction. This is a story I have no trouble believing took place, and in the face of this, my second viewing of it, I could really care less. I was more concerned with the imagery of crowds and the single metaphor De Sica builds out of the bicycle. Here are characters like this father and son, who are almost always either overwhelmed by a crowd, in which they are no longer single entities - or alone in a harsh world, in which case, they are fledgling and desperately need something to cling to. The bicycle is certainly the livelihood of the protagonist - but it's much more. It's a metaphor for the singularity and uniqueness of chance, the circumstance that befalls everyone - even though everyone has a these limitations, they are certainly painful and, in most cases, shape us. It's as beloved a symbol as Kane's sled in 'Citizen Kane' - and the story, though masked of the utmost simplicity - is a complex statement about the double standards of poverty, the psychological aftermath of war and how it breaks down system after system and finally, the helplessness of parents, who cannot spare their children from their fates - and wear it on their profiles every day of their lives. The last shot says all of that - and frames the kindly and once innocent protagonist as a miserable failure, a hypocrite and a sub par father. A downer of cinematic majesty.
(International Cinema Limited : Neo--Realism, part 1))

(International Cinema Limited : Neo-Realism, part 2)

A penta-spin on Kate Chopin's short, strong story about a woman whose husband is thought dead (she rejoices inside) and turns out not to be - giving her the shock of her life. It's not so much irritating that a freshening of adaptation includes a vignette where the main character simply reads to us the three page story. Nor is it disheartening that one of the takes includes the husband going into this strange monologue about the time he accidentally hit a squirrel. The two straightforward shots are dry enough - the kind that beg you to read the story and suck out all the irony, metonymy and alliteration headfirst - but its the last bit, where all the liberties are taken and all the angles met with a new verve: dreamlike, compelling, inverse - almost worth actually watching all five as a comparison. But since you're likely to have a bad time of it trying to track it down, perhaps the best advice, as always, is to just read the damn story.

(International Cinema Limited : Neo-Realism, part 3)

My favorite of the Woody Allen films (isn't everyone's favorite the odd man out?). Wonderfully evocative of how much fun it is to watch Allen as himself, Allen sculpturing homage to his personal favorites ('Double Indemnity' and 'The Lady From Shanghai' are each massaged in key scenes) and Allen writing jokes that are still highbrow perfection in a lowbrow world. I'm not only guilty of loving a film I know to be circular and light - I'm guilty of turning that into an argument for simplicity in Allen's films. Lord knows that's not what he strives for (almost all of his films have intricate plot strands that are not only symbolic, but complicated right on the surface). Nothing about this caper isn't an unfolding rug which leaving the viewer in the hands of a director who clearly knows that a genre film can be melded into a comedy as soon as a general technique is achieved and well-known. And who better than Allen, whose general techniques are widely accepted and mocked, to bring us on a eloquently crafted thrill ride in which he, Diane Keaton, Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston track a neighbor they suspect of killing his wife. In the end, its always less that what you think it is - but Allen's careful visual style never betrays the film - in fact, of his repertoire, this story and the whole aesthetic aura Allen builds around this introduction to a popularity he would enjoy (that flirted with Oscar and huge critical success in the face of violent change) seems tailored to fit his hand held intimacy framed against the comfortable living of New York City, his ambitious setting - the one he loves so dearly. 'Manhattan Murder Mystery' is never more than a farce - but its careful and meticulous - so its a damn good farce.

An awful, absolutely abhorrent condensed version of a short, must-read-to-get-the-jist-of story. Thank God I was assigned to read this in class so that my homelife could become a series of sexism arguments, veiled threats and bold accusations. Avoid book and film at all costs.

(International Cinema Limited : Cuban Post Revolutionary, Part 1)

Finally, the entertaining and artfully crafted spectrum of emotions come alive in a film about addiction easily comparable to 'Trainspotting' in the way it celebrates the reality of junkies - they get high because it feels good, making the fall from grace that is overdose and rehab come as a fiery hell that at once purges all of their sins and creates a newborn being. That being is Fuckhead, miraculously endowed by actor Billy Crudup - who gets better and more likeable with each performance (this year alone, in 'Waking the Dead' and 'Almost Famous'). In this, my second viewing, I had a chance to re-examine the third act I felt so faltered by the first time around. Its still lacking in the gusto and sharply speeding tragicomedy of the first two acts, but it almost entirely redeems itself by closing on such a naturally high, optimistic note. Crudup amidst a magical stage freeze of elderly folk - lamenting on the powers of togetherness as healing - before the aged resume the motion they share as Fuckhead lurches into enlightenment clear head first. 'Jesus' Son', as I stated, enjoys a range of feelings genuinely - all of them vivid and vibrant, as if no other movie had made us laugh, cry or shudder before. Its as funny as it is sad; as cathartic as it is heartbreaking; exciting as it is serene and through it all, if there's a string that holds the wayward, thatched strands of the somber Denis Leary; the down-to-earth freak out Samantha Morton; the doped and dopey Jack Black; the beaten feistiness of Dennis Hopper; and the laid-up heart of Holly Hunter; it must be Crudup, still the front-runner for best actor in the court of public opinion according to the high judge. Me.