Annie Hall was a saint.

It took me three days to get through The Sorrow and the Pity. I cannot conceive of seeing it in the theatre like Annie did.

From the title, I thought it would be a lot more sorrowful and pitiful than it was. There were definitely horrendous things described, but I was expecting more Holocaust or POW footage, not the interview heavy style that the director used. I did learn quite a bit, though. I didn't know the degree to which the Vichy government not only enabled, but also actively aided and abetted the German war machine, including the Holocaust. Collaboration is different than straight-up occupation, and I feel I have a better understanding of that part of the war. I thought that the time spent with the Frenchman who joined the SS as a kid was pretty chilling. His warning to passionate young people to avoid being seduced by ideology is particularly important, I would imagine, in France in the late 60s. I was also, of course, monumentally impressed with the Resistance fighters themselves. I doubt I could have been that brave, and like most really brave people, they don't think themselves brave at all. But, that's something I could learn from a book or History Channel doc. What about this movie makes it important as a movie?

I thought the direction/interviewing POV was pretty subtle. Clearly, the film had an aggressive pro-Resistance stance, but that wasn't shoved down the viewer's throat, Michael Moore-style. Usually, the interviewer let the subjects hang themselves by the way they described their failure to oppose the Vichy government, or their failure to have any remorse about their position at all. This was true with the French subjects, but especially so with the fat cigar-chomping, war-medal wearing, "former" Nazi who seems to have been interviewed at his daughter's wedding. The footage of German propaganda was shocking in its overt racism, and I thought the archival footage was well integrated into the larger movie. But that's sort of film school stuff.

I wish the timeline had been clearer--the movie jumps around a lot during the war years, making it hard for me to get a sense of whether it got easier or harder to resist the occupiers, and/or whether more or less people participated as the war dragged on. I also suspect (from what I could overhear of the English-speaking subjects) that the translation was a bit spotty. So, I'm guessing the book includes this because of its subject matter, not its technique?

Read a Book Instead

I have to confess: I stopped paying attention to this film after 18 minutes and some odd seconds.

I left it running and went in search of what I wrote about Irene Nemirovsky's book Suite Francaise (here if you're interested). And then I went in physical search of my copy of a collection of her other novels (David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, and The Courilof Affair). And then I started reading David Golder instead of paying attention to the film at all. I looked up at one point to see a skin being shaken/pulled off a dead rabbit, felt justified in my decision, and started to write this. Once the first disc was over, I thought about "watching" the second but it contained just as much footage for me to ignore so I popped the discs back into the Netflix envelope and into the mail slot immediately.

My problem with this film is mainly that it's boring. But, it is boring for a couple of reasons:
1. I couldn't immediately detect an overwhelming narrative. I need an order to all of these things being strung together and I should be able to find that within the first 18 minutes. Part of any effective argument of any sort is to interest and draw in the audience. If I'm not drawn in, I don't see your argument and, worse, I don't care about your argument.
2. I already knew France wasn't the model of resistance to the Nazi occupation so none of this is exactly new information. And, to present information I was already basically aware of in a non-narrative boring manner doesn't lead to great results in terms of my attention span. I'm 100% sure that the film contains something, even if it's tiny, that I don't know already and that I would be interested to know.
3. The length. Yes, I basically gave up after 18 minutes (thank God we made a "have to post something" rule rather than a "have to pay full attention to the whole movie" rule). With a narrative and a less imposing length breathing down my neck, I might have tried to stick it out. But when two discs worth of boring documentary show up from Netflix, I'm daunted.
4. It's French. *Sigh* I know I must have seen a French movie at some point that I liked but so far in this project they're all big snooze-fests in incredibly disappointing ways.

Le livre dit (yeah, I looked that up at the 52 minute mark of the film running in the background) basically we should watch this film because it helped bring to light the inconsistencies of narrative about French occupation: "For over two decades, French society seemed unwilling to examine the moral questions raised by the German Occupation." And, a favorite reason of the book, the film was banned from French national television and had to open in art houses instead.

My thought: read a book instead.

The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)

When this French documentary's number came up, I laughed out loud. Not because I find either the Vichy government's collaboration with the Nazi occupiers or the French Resistance funny, but because of Annie Hall. Alvy Singer always makes his girlfriend Annie go see The Sorrow and the Pity when they arrive to a film too late, and it freaking cracks me up--the title so perfectly encapsulates a movie a Woody Allen character would be obsessed with. As far as the movie itself goes, I only want to see it so I can laugh more authentically at AH. I'm sure that in the late 60s, barely twenty years after the war, the idea that the situation in France during the war was pretty intense was interesting and unexplored. Now, not so much. We'll get through it, Nat, and when Annie's number comes up, it will all be worth it!

Links to Review Posts for this Film:
Tracy's "Annie Hall was a saint"
Natalie's "Read a Book Instead"

The Help--Indian Edition

Having re-watched A Passage to India less than a week after The Help, I couldn't help (heh) but notice connections between the two. Both purport to be films about a marginalized social group (colonized Indians and African American women respectively), and both end up being more about whether or not whitey chooses to be an ass. Which is fine, but unavoidably places said marginalized social group into a supporting/reactive position. And it doesn't help to cast Alec freaking Guinness as the spokesman for Indian self-actualization, David Lean. Jesus.

It's really difficult for me to separate this film from what I know of Forster and where he was in his life when he was writing the novel on which this movie is based. Passage was the last book he wrote (though Maurice, way too gay to publish when he was alive, was released later, posthumously), and tries to express his homosexuality without ever at all saying that he was homosexual. So gayness and desire and freedom all get conflated with Indianness in a way that I don't think means to be racist, but ends up being problematic for the Indian characters none the less. In the film, the scene that most embodies this tendency is when Adela (who I believe is Forster's stand-in, though would never argue that in a paper because it's a minefield of fallacies) stumbles across a temple depicting erotic art, and then gets chased away by monkeys. Previously she had decided not to marry Ronny (which I think we can all agree is a good move, as he is an ass), but afterwards she is so frightened and excited and confused by the possibility of the very (sexual) liberation for which she has "quested" that she runs back to him, and has a major league freak-out at the Caves. It's not a good thing to make an entire subcontinent representative of anything, even if it is something positive like freedom, and this is the hook on which both the film and the novel get hung for me.

Along these lines, I don't like the way Victor Banerjee portrays Aziz. In the novel he is in love with Englishness, but is not as step and fetch as he appears in the film. What the movie does get right is the sexual tension between Aziz and Fielding. For Forster, I believe, in a better world they would be together. There's a lot more subtlety and ambiguity in both Mrs. Moore and the incident in the Marabar Caves in the novel, but the message ends up being the same: don't try to integrate. I think this is a pretty sensitive (if somewhat cynical) argument--rather than pretend that all people are the same, Forster, and the film, seem to suggest that there are some bridges that can't be crossed. To his credit, I think the distance isn't ontological but social: That years of prejudice prevent meaningful Anglo-Indian connection, and the breach will take years to be repaired. Aziz's retreat to the mountains and reclamation of Indian dress reminded me of the first act of Gandhi, but we never get to see what happens to Aziz after he rejects a British identity.

And I've managed to say very little about the film itself! In true Lean fashion, it's gorgeous--clean and epic and beautiful. It is my least favorite Forster novel and my least favorite adaptation, and the two are probably related. I'm curious to hear if the book recommends it for any other reason than Lean's name. What did you think, Nat? Did you find it at all racially problematic?

Ugly Stepsister

Well. I don't hate it. But I don't need to see it again either.

I was as surprised as Tracy that this isn't a Merchant Ivory (though it smacks of the style and plot and costuming and pacing and quality of actor and E.M. Forster source material and and and). Not at all relevant, in checking the Merchant Ivory connection (before Tracy posted--I wasn't doubting her), I learned that Ishiguro wrote the screenplay for The White Countess (one of the few MI films I've seen) which makes me incredibly curious as to why exactly he allowed Alex Garland anywhere near Never Let Me Go because, as much as I appreciate 28 Days Later, Never Let Me Go was a d.i.s.a.s.t.e.r. But, back to this film: I've also never seen a full David Lean film (I saw most-ish of Doctor Zhivago). Anyway, also surprisingly, I've not read any Forster. None.

So, I came to the film without any source material and I think I'd rather have read the book. I can't compare it to the book but I have the feeling that the book is more complete and less frustrating in what is left out (why Adela cracks in the cave)--although I have no doubt a complete explanation is also lacking in the book, I think the book must provide a more cohesive narrative beyond the "we're going to leave this part out" approach of the film. I *think.* Perhaps I'm wrong--Tracy have you read this one?

The film was gorgeous--especially on BluRay--and well acted but problematic in its representation of race and culture. There are nods to the fact that the Brits are being racist idiots in their interactions with the Indians (the Indian women saying they understand the English woman when she asks for a translation) but as these interactions aren't explored further the Indians are left as a sideshow like a circus elephant, gorgeously bedecked, performing a trick; we clap and move on as if it were an anomaly and not the product of actual intelligence or hard work on the elephant's part (perhaps, though acknowledging the [white] trainer). And, yes, I used the elephant on purpose because of the pretty creature used to carry the ladies to the caves. But, in a film that is supposedly ALL ABOUT the Brits being complete twits in their subjugation of the Indians, the subjugation of the Indians by the film is incredibly problematic. The film does what the film says not to do--the film, in a way, is being Adela while saying it's Mrs. Moore.

The book's opinion is equally problematic. First it praises Lean's past films: "David Lean's final film finds him just as obsessed with working with the widescreen tableau that defined Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Doctor Zhivago, but A Passage to India (admittedly not shot in 'Scope) is clearly more a movie of ideas than a movie of spectacle." So . . . .  Lean's other movies were good, this one seems similar (but not done in the same way) but it's different. That tells me I should watch one of those other films rather than this one. And then the book does EXACTLY what I told my freshman composition students NOT to do not fifteen minutes before typing this (no joke): "the film by necessity loses some of the internalized thrust of the multi-perspective novel, and therefore misses some of the nuance of its characters' various motivations. Additionally, A Passage to India sometimes comes across as a story of mystery and vague sexual hysteria rather than a biting adieu to British colonialism." So . . . . we have to apologize for the movie before we can talk about why we should watch it? Not a good sign. And then we have more praise for Lean and the book says Lean's work can overcome the film's shortcomings. Um, NO! The film's shortcomings ARE Lean's work. And then we have some plot summary and ANOTHER APOLOGY about the "not as forceful or thought provoking a conclusion as it could (or should) have been."

It seems we should watch this film because David Lean directed some films the book thinks genius and this is the last one he directed before he died. Seriously, there isn't one bit of absolute praise of this film. Passage is like the homely sister of his earlier films; the one who has to be invited to the party too so mom will let the better looking siblings go out. By the way, the supposedly more comely siblings included by book are: Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago, which puts exactly half of his eligible work as a director in this book.

Tracy, I know you've seen this one before--did it hold up?

A Passage to India (1984)

Well color me surprised. I could have sworn up and down that this adaptation of E.M. Forster's 1924 novel was by the same director/producer team that brought us other Forster adaptations like Howards End, Maurice, and A Room with a View. But I would have been wrong. This Oscar-bait flick was NOT a Merchant Ivory production. Actually, it was written and directed by David Lean, who I'm willing to wager is going to make at least three more appearances on this blog. The novel itself is sort of pre-post-Colonial, following two British women Adela Quested (yeah, subtle last name) and her soon-to-be mother-in-law, Mrs. Moore. Both Judy Davis and Peggy Ashcroft were nominated for their respected performances, and Ashcroft won, making her the oldest woman to win best supporting actress. David Lean looked at the relationship between Brits and their colonies to great acclaim in Lawrence of Arabia, and I'm a huge fan of Forster, though his sense of geopolitics is a little constrained by the novel of manners mode which is his forte. Let's take a trip to the Marabar Caves!

Links to Review of this Film:
Tracy's "The Help--Indian Edition"
Natalie's "The Ugly Stepsister"

This is a comedy?

So Bill Jr. comes back from college, with his own sense of style, a passion for music and a girlfriend, and his father, who he hasn't seen since he was a baby (!!??), beats it all out of him. Hysterical.

There's a whole class/masculinity thing going on here that coincides nicely with Michael Kimmel's theory about the history of manhood in America. Steamboat Sr. clearly has some anxiety about money and status, and projects that onto his son, who is unacceptable because he's smart and dresses differently and is nice to babies and doesn't beat people up. I'm reading the beret as a nod towards a degraded, European-style masculinity (interestingly, the same tactic was used against John Kerry, who also is associated with Boston). When Junior does punch the sheriff, it's more depressing than anything else.

Oh, and the film is also racist. Not a big surprise, but it bears mentioning. However, I wasn't engaged enough to be outraged while watching the movie. Mostly I was sort of bored. I don't think silent films are going to be a new passion of mine. I appreciate that some of these stunts were probably quite expensive and innovative for the time, but that doesn't mean I found them riveting.

There were some things I found funny--everyone wearing a white carnation (though some nice racism in that scene as well--hiLARious that Steamboat Sr. would have a black or Jewish son), and how Junior tries to mime to his father that there's a saw in the bread. Having not a lot of experience with silent films, I was also surprised at how few dialogue cards there were. Keaton, along with all the actors, has to do a lot with the body, and it's interesting to see where Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell, et. al. came from. The female lead was also a lot prettier than the Betty Boop-esque poster makes her out to be.

So what's the book's verdict? And what the hell kind of storm was that? You'd think the paper might have mentioned that a friggin' monsoon was coming through River Junction.