The Story of Film – Episode 15

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Notes:

2000 Onwards: Film Moves Full Circle – and the Future of Movies.

  • Swiss Miss (1938) dir. John G. Blystone and Hal Roach
    • Putting a piano in the Swiss Alps, shot on a set with a painted background
      • We know something will go wrong, it always does
  • Blonde Venus (1932) dir. Josef von Sternberg
    • Hollywood at its most playful, absurd, new
  • Employees Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Louis Lumière
    • Movies started with this documentary
  • Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) dir. Michael Moore
    • First time in the story of film that non fiction cinema held it’s own on the big screen
    • One of the biggest box office hits in the history of documentary
    • All they had to do was show the footage, add a commentary, and time stamps
  • The Bourne Supremacy (2004) dir. Paul Greengrass
    • Film above made the same amount of money as this one
    • Filmed more like a documentary, the director came from documentary’s
  • Être et avoir (2002) dir. Nicolas Philibert
  • Zidane – A Portrait in the 21st Century (2006) dir. Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno
    • Documentary
    • Used extra long lenses to film a football match
      • Follows one player, not the overall match, we see his thoughts as subtitles, although he never speaks
  • The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) dir. Andrew Dominik
    • Shallow focus, no attempt to computerize the images
  • Way Down East (1920) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. D. W. Griffith
    • Film above has the delicate photo-realism of this film
  • Climates (2006) dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan
    • Shot digitally
    • A hotel room, a wife in close up, the drip of water on the soundtrack
      • We cut to her older husband, his face half obscured
      • Lots of mysterious focus shots
    • Sad film about marriage
  • The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) dir. Cristi Puiu
    • New Romanian cinema
    • Passionately showed that we are all in this scary new century together
  • The Headless Woman (2008) dir. Lucrecia Martel
    • Argentinian film
    • Static camera with one shot shows woman in her car, reaching for her ringing phone, accidentally hitting something, pulling over, trying to calm herself down, then driving off
    • The camera stays in the car as she stops again, gets out, leaves the shot
    • We see her keep secrets from her family and from herself throughout the film
    • Hauntingly unglossy movie
  • Battle in Heaven (2005) dir. Carlos Reygadas
    • Close up of a dark hand holding a light-skinned one
    • When they are shown having sex, the camera travels up and we see a single uninterrupted over 3 minute long crane shot showing people repairing a satellite dish, and other homes
  • Oasis (2002) dir. Lee Chang-Dong
    • A man who is just out of prison is dominating the conversation at the dinner table
      • He has brought with him a young woman with cerebral palsy, it is uncomfortable
  • Memories of Murder (2003) dir. Bong Joon-ho
    • A cereal killer has killed 10 Korean women, which is a true story
    • A cop is looking for the killer, he seems haunted by the memory of the murder
    • A girl then approaches him, and reveals that she may have seen the murderer
      • A conversation, simply shot
    • All through the film, the detective has been looking for this kind of breakthrough, and now that he finally gets it, it’s just ordinary, it doesn’t give him anything
  • Oldboy (2003) dir. Park Chan-wook
    • Film based off Japanese manga cartoon book
    • The camera keeps its distance on a dolly during the fight
  • Le Voyage dans la lune (1902) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Georges Méliès(Although Mark Cousins and the title on the screen indicate that the scene being shown is from La lune à un mètre, the scene is actually from Le Voyage dans la lune.
    • One of the first science fiction films
  • Mulholland Dr. (2001) dir. David Lynch
    • A girl falls asleep and dives down into her own consciousness
    • Then the girl grows up, falls in love with another girl, and gets so jealous she hires a hit-man to kill her
      • Another man is there, and it is as if he is seeing her commit the crime, the thought-crime
    • So innovative because it was the wizard of oz plunging into a black rabbit hole
  • Requiem for a Dream (2000) dir. Darren Aronofsky
    • Looked at people on drugs
    • Movie about how drugs distort the world
  • Songs from the Second Floor (2000) dir. Roy Andersson
    • Man has burned down his business and is on the train, the walls a bad green, but suddenly heightened, like a musical fantasy
    • In the ending, symbols of religion are being dumped into a wasteland beyond the city
      • Uncut shot lasts for minutes, and then people stand up from the field, like the day of judgement, they have been there all along
  • Way Out West (1937) dir. James W. Horne
    • Previous director fan of this
  • Indiscreet (1958) (introduced in Episode 5) dir. Stanley Donen
  • Rules of Attraction (2002) dir. Roger Avary
    • We feel in the middle of this flirtatious conversation
  • Avatar (2009) dir. James Cameron
    • CGI really helped make this movie
    • In real life, the man is a marine and cannot walk, but he runs in his avatar body
    • The faces were filmed for realistic facial expressions
    • Managed to insert the mystery of human thinking and emotion into a digital animation
  • Motion Capture Mirrors Emotion (2009) dir. Jorge Ribas
  • Tropical Malady (2004) dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
    • Backdrop so still it looks almost painted
    • The film then seems to break down, it goes to black, restarts, we see a man in the dark, looking up at a tree lit by fireflies
      • We learn that his friend is now a tiger, and he must hunt him
      • The film seems to have been reincarnated, from a naturalistic tale of friendship, to a tale of hunting and hunted
  • Mother and Son (1997) dir. Alexander Sokurov
    • Russian cottage in the countryside, mother is dying, her son tends to her, she is happy dying in his arms
    • Many critics feel this is one of the best films of its time
  • Russian Ark (2002) dir. Alexander Sokurov
    • A ball from older times, they flow down the steps like a river, but we feel when they leave their heads will be cut off by young men waiting, they are going to slaughter and it is unavoidable
      • There was nothing noble about the slaughter, just violent, disgusting
    • Director saw the film as the last breath of this society
      • Because of that, filmed it all in one take, there is but one cut in the entire movie
  • In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2003) dir. Knut Elstermann
    • Documentary footage from when the film above was finished

Epilogue the Year 2046

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