jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Awards season has begun in earnest, preparations for the About.com redesign are in high gear, and the Phil Lesh Halloween extravaganza and marathon is upon us, so I’m resurrecting a category from the early days of muckworld, when everything was still hidden behind a password and we had a grand total of four (4) readers: that’s right, “Konsum” is back, a.k.a the sloppy roundup of everything I’ve been watching/eating/reading. We’ll get back to meatier individual posts as soon as the dust settles.

The photos above are from from last Saturday’s panel “Haverford and the Power of the Pen,” a title that makes me giggle and think of Indiana Jones. From left to right in the top picture: Luke, the friendly student moderator, Marcy Dermansky, author of Twins, David Behrman, publisher, Richard Lingeman, author/editor The Nation, Ron Christie, author of Black in the White House, and Alison Grambs, Friar’s Club writer and author of The Smart Girl’s Guide to Getting Even. In the photo on the right, Christie, Marcy, and Behrman. With a roster this diverse, the resulting discussion was plenty interesting, but I couldn’t stop thinking: we’re now one degree of separation from both Victor Navasky and Dick Cheney. Eek! More photos from Haverford and Bryn Mawr at flickr. On to the movies:

Diva
Film Forum is rereleasing this celebrated 1981 French film, and the press notes they’re handing out might as well have a fat disclaimer on top: anything you may have to say about his movie is redundant. There are pages of raves here by Pauline Kael and the like, along with a fascinating interview with Beineix that moots whatever you might want to add. Yes, Diva sparkles with ideas, every shot is a delight, every element aims to please — it’s a joyous celebration of the possibilities of cinema. Regardless, I better get a review ready for the Friday opening. Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1981. *****

Open Hearts
Where does domestic melodrama end and soap opera begin? Susanne Bier’s dogme drama doesn’t care. Mads Mikkelsen is excellent as a doctor who falls in love with the fiancee of the guy his wife put into a coma. There’s a whiff of General Hospital about all of this, but it should go without saying that the acting and writing are far superior. Still: lots of people talking about theiremotioms in hallways. From the director of After the Wedding and Things We Lost in the Fire. Elsker dig for evigt. Susanne Bier, 2002. ***

Things We Lost in the Fire
Look, it’s a foreign film with Hale Berry, Bencio del Toro, and David Duchovny. Another Bier melodrama, this one slightly more appealing than Open Hearts because of del Toro and those adorable children. I’m hoping Marcy will review this for About. Susanne Bier, 2007. ***

Knocked Up
Another faux-transgressive family values commercial by Judd Apatow, filled with improbable characters and unbelievable plot developments. The jokes are funny exactly to the degree that you consider them “racy.” I laughed twice and shook my head the rest of the time. Who the hell are these people? Judd Apatow, 2007. *

Wheel of Time
Herzog gets fantastic footage documenting a Buddhist ritual in Bodh Gaya, India, but the film loses steam when when the action moves to Graz, Austria. The sand mandala is amazing, and who doesn’t want to see Werner cracking jokes with the Dalai Lama? Werner Herzog, 2003. ***

Zodiac
Reception of this Fincher epic was mixed, but I found the twists and turns of the hunt for the late-sixties California serial killer extremely compelling. Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. are a great trio of leading men, and there’s an old-fashioned, All the President’s Men feel to the film. Because it’s based on a true, unsolved case, there’s no telling where the narrative will go next. Freed from the confines of formula, Zodiac also becomes a study of the nature of obsession. David Fincher, 2007. ***

Michael Clayton
Solid legal thriller about the moral quandry of a man who finds himself on the wrong side of an Erin Brockovich class action suit. George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, and Sidney Pollack are spot-on and the narrative is laid out without condescension. Tony Gilroy, 2007. ***

La Jetee
It’s always good to revisit the classics. YouTube has the entire film but Criterion is nicer. Chris Marker, 1962. *****

Citizen Kane
Like I said. There’s always new things to admire in Welles’s masterpiece–this time I was concentrating on details of the elaborate narrative structure. Orson Welles, 1941. *****

It Is Fine. EVERYTHING IS FINE!
Crispin Glover’s second film as a director, a mad sex murder mystery featuring a hero/villain with cerebral palsy, will require a few more days to digest. I’ll confess right here that I might have walked out if Mr. Glover himself hadn’t been guarding the doors; in the end I’m glad I stayed. He also performs a slide show with the film that has to be seen to be believed. David Brothers and Crispin Hellion Glover, 2007. ***

Bonus: I always thought that the Grateful Dead’s “Dire Wolf” was inspired by the Zodiac killer, but I can’t seem to find a reference for this — not even at David Dodd’s Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics. Here’s a video of an acoustic ‘81 version anyway:

Ah, lists! Like all fans, film aficionados are collectors, and every now and then, all collectors enjoy sifting through their stash to trot out their favorite baubles, arranged one way or another, to show them off to the world. Look! I’ve got three of the ultra-rare green kind, and oh, how that marbled one catches the sunlight just so! Toying with the objects of our affection in this way makes us feel happy and safe. In the world of movies, that’s what we call a list.

The movies we’ve seen (and can remember) are our stash and currency, and the best and shiniest of them will have to bear the scrutiny of any passers-by. As members of NYFCO, Marcy and I do this once a year, and recently, I’ve been asked, along with a number of bloggers and critics, to help put together a list of best films made in a language other than English before 2002. The list of nominations is out now at Edward Copeland’s site, and it’s a good one. You can go vote on your favorites, and a final tally will be published soon.

For the goal-oriented, that should be the end of the story, but I always find that democracy and criticism make an uneasy fit, and to me, the final result is somewhat beside the point. Instead, you might be happier taking a look at the individual ballots (or adding your own) here, at Jim Emerson’s site, at the House Next Door, or on your own damn blog. The fun is in the arranging of the marbles, the weighing of their comparative beauty, the debates over which ones have been overlooked or could be traded in for shinier ones. (It’s also a terrific way to fatten up your Netflix queue.) For the avid collector, the list is never an end in itself — it’s just a way to spend a little bit more time with some of our favorite things.

So here’s the snapshot of movies I considered worthy of inclusion according to this particular set of parameters on this particular day–culled from a much longer list of close contenders while LH 182, after three hours delay, finally began its initial descent on Berlin-Tegel, a fact I mention only because it may help explain the heavy Teutonic emphasis: I literally found myself in the Himmel über Berlin. Feel free to add your 25 favorites in the comments, and don’t forget to vote at Edward Copeland’s site. In alphabetical order:

8 1/2 Federico Fellini, 1963
Aguirre, The Wrath of God Werner Herzog, 1972
Akira Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988
Au Hasard Balthazar Robert Bresson, 1966
Band of Outsiders Jean-Luc Godard, 1964
Black Orpheus Marcel Camus, 1959
City of God Fernando Meirelles, 2002
Day for Night Francois Truffaut, 1973
M Fritz Lang, 1931
Nights of Cabiria Federico Fellini, 1957
Run Lola Run Tom Tykwer, 1998
Seven Samurai Akira Kurosawa, 1954
Solaris Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972
Spirited Away Hayao Miyazaki, 2001
Stolen Kisses Francois Truffaut, 1968
The Lovers on the Bridge Leos Carax, 1991
The Man Without a Past Aki Kaurismaki, 2002
The Rules of the Game Jean Renoir, 1939
The Seventh Seal Ingmar Bergman, 1957
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Jacques Demy, 1964
The Wages of Fear Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953
Wings of Desire Wim Wenders, 1987
Y Tu Mama Tambien Alfonso Cuaron, 2001
Yojimbo Akira Kurosawa, 1961
Zur Sache, Schätzchen May Spils, 1968

Ten years ago, Werner Herzog made a documentary called Little Dieter Needs to Fly, about a German-born U.S. Navy pilot who was shot down in Laos during the beginning stages of the Vietnam war. Now, Herzog returns with a fictionalized version of the very same story starring Christian Bale. It’s obvious why the director of Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde, and Grizzly Man couldn’t stay away from this material: Dieter Dengler’s jungle ordeal is bursting with themes that have defined Herzog’s career, and it’s one hell of a story.

After his plane is downed during a secret bombing mission on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Dengler (Bale) is taken prisoner by Pathet Lao soldiers. His captors torture and abuse him in fiendishly innovative ways before marching him through the stunning landscape to a detainment camp. The other captives (played by Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies) are resigned to their miserable bamboo prison, but Dengler, with German ingenuity, hatches plans for escape. The details of his imprisonment and subsequent flight through the dense Southeast Asian jungle form an encyclopedia of deprivation: hunger, madness, pain, and treacherous flora and fauna all around. And yet, in this version of the quintessential Herzogian battle of man versus nature, man triumphs.

Anybody who has seen Burden of Dreams knows that on extreme location shoots, Herzog doesn’t spare his actors, and stories about Christian Bale’s own ordeal have been making the rounds; scenes involving worms, leeches, and waterfalls appear all too real, with no stunt doubles or CGI in sight. Through it all, Bale’s performance is wonderfully emphatic, always holding on to a stubborn optimism as he turns from fresh-faced fighter pilot to the emaciated, scruffy wreck that emerges from the jungle, his face caked with blood and dirt. In the supporting roles, Steve Zahn takes a welcome break from his recent run of comedies, and Jeremy Davies does a repeat performance of the wigged-out freak from Soderbergh’s Solaris.

Many movies falsely promise what Rescue Dawn delivers: a thrilling, visceral adventure about what marketers and book flap writers like to call “the resilience of the human spirit.” To Herzog’s credit, this most American of his films hits all the marks of the genre splendidly without ever resorting to easy shock tactics or vilification of the so-called enemy. Rescue Dawn is that rarest of beasts, a powerful fiction based on fact that sacrifices neither storytelling nor the truth.

Rescue Dawn. Werner Herzog, 2006. ****

Rescue Dawn opens on July 4. Here’s the trailer:

It’s not difficult to argue that all Herzog/Kinski films are attempts at making and remaking the same movie — Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu and Woyzek less so — but that’s the beginning of the discussion rather than its conclusion. After all, most romantic comedies are remakes of the same movie, too. This final collaboration is no less vital than the other films. Kinski plays a Brazilian bandit who comes to the African West Coast as slave trader. Again, here’s the white man in a dangerously alien environment, again, here are Kinski’s borderless mania and passion. We’ve been familiar with Herzog’s grand shots at least since the Machu Picchu opening of Aguirre, and if anything, the extended takes of hundreds of extras in tribal gear are even more breathtaking, as much ethnography as they are drama. It’s also the first time we’ve seen Kinski lead an army of black amazons into battle, a sight that’s not easily forgotten. Take that, 300.

Cobra Verde is playing at the IFC Center right now, and here’s A.O. Scott:

Watching “Cobra Verde,” you feel at times that Mr. Herzog, like a figure out of Joseph Conrad, is in danger of losing his way, or even his mind. His eye, however, never deserts him, and the final third of this film contains sequences of horrifying sublimity and ethereal beauty, moments that have a clarity and power beyond the reach of reason.

Cobra Verde. Werner Herzog, 1987. ****

• Klaus Kinski: Ich Brauche Liebe
• My Best Fiend
• Kinski on YouTube

Only Werner Herzog would attempt to remake 2001: A Space Odyssey as documentary. Brad Dourif plays an alien stranded on earth; Roswell and microbes are involved somehow, and NASA footage is slyly repurposed to illustrate a space mission to his home planet. Real-life mathematicians explain how to slingshot around planets, and for the exploration of Dourif’s home world, Herzog uses gorgeous imagery from an ice dive. Narrative is kept to a minimum; it’s all just an excuse to show people floating through bizarre black and blue environments–which is something I can watch for hours, especially if it’s after midnight.

The Wild Blue Yonder. Werner Herzog, 2005. ***

• Official Site
• RT: 56%
• More at Gpod

[tags]film, 3 stars, werner herzog, nasa, aliens, diving, space, mathematicians, science, brad dourif, blue, light, ice, jellyfish, scifi, documentary[/tags]

To me, Herzog’s Büchner adaptation smells of musty classrooms, but Klaus Kinski saves it with an incredible performance as the humiliated, schizophrenic private who can’t take it anymore. The murder at the climax is unbearably intense; the slow-motion take of Kinski with the knife might be one of the most gut-wrenchingly emotional single shots I have ever seen.

Woyzeck. Werner Herzog, 1979. ****

[tags]büchner, play, adaptation, theater, 4 stars, film, werner herzog, klaus kinski, eva mattes, german, murder[/tags]

Self-serving, untrustworthy, irresponsible. I had some doubts about this project the first time I saw it, but now I find it insufferable. What exactly makes Werner Herzog an objective authority on Herzog/Kinski? He revisits locations from their shoots, exploits lengthy clips from their collaborations, and slanders Germany’s greatest actor for an hour and a half, carefully defending himself against all accusations. Those endless pages of insults in Kinski’s autobiography, where he calls Herzog “a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep?” Herzog claims he actually helped Kinski come up with the abuse. Curiously enough, everybody Herzog interviews–Claudia Cardinale and Eva Mattes among them–only speaks of Kinski’s warmth and professionalism. Kinski clearly had a red-hot temper, but Herzog’s snivelling self-justifications, disguised as objective and authoritative account, add up to the character assassination of a dead genius. Klaus Kinski deserves better than this.

My Best Fiend. Werner Herzog, 1999. **

Here’s a scene from the set Fitzcarraldo. In the voice over, added fifteen years after the fact, Herzog claims: “The cause was trivial, and I didn’t bother to interfere because Kinski, compared with his previous outbreaks, seemed rather mild.” Really?

[tags]klaus kinski, werner herzog, documentary, character assassination, claudia cardinale, eva mattes, film, 2 stars, untrustworthy[/tags]

The secret behind such perennial stoner favorites as Dark Side of the Rainbow is that the brain will always look at odd juxtapositions and find patterns–it’s what the brain does. So when you watch a seemingly random double feature like Hacking Democracy and Aguirre, the two will seem to speak to each other as a matter of course. The quest for democratic elections can seem as quixotic as the search for El Dorado, a doomed raft of fools headed nowhere while the jungle teems with terrorists and cannibals. The ridiculous “Emperor of El Dorado” signs meaningless letters while a crippled Machiavelli schemes for control over the rotting simulacrum of civilization that continues to disintegrate as they drift downstream toward complete paralysis and entropy.

Then again, part of the brilliance of Aguirre is its metaphorical power, the ease with which it invites readings like these. From the linear first shot of the conquistadores decending through the Andes, the film is suffused with a dreamlike quality, and by the time Aguirre reaches its circular, monkey-infested finale, it has moved into a hallucinatory state that makes it feel entirely like a product of the collective unconscious. Even more so than that other Conrad-inspired epic of jungle madness, Apocalypse Now, Aguirre reveals history as an illusion.

In his autobiography, Klaus Kinski portrays Werner Herzog as an incompetent buffon, a bumbling, bloviating idiot who doesn’t know the first thing about filmmaking–and I’m just summarizing the gentler of several pages worth of abuse. According to Kinski, the task of saving Aguirre fell to him, Kinski. I’ve been entertaining the possibility that this may be true. Kinski’s genius is evident in every shot.

Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes. Werner Herzog, 1972. *****

• Aguirre is currently playing at Film Forum
• Aguirre at Rotten Tomatotes
• Large chunks of Aguirre on YouTube
• Kinski Files Blog

[tags]klaus kinski, werner herzog, aguirre, 5 stars, film, german, south america, rafts, river, doom, tragedy, civilization, hallucinatory, apocalypse now[/tags]