Nine Astonishing Cinematic Experiences in Under 90 Minutes
The heavy burden of time, not everyone can find the time to watch the 153 minute long Metropolis.
In today’s busy society people are working longer, harder, and have more distractions filling their spare time than ever before, however, films are increasingly being labelled as ‘epic’ and even normative cinema doesn’t find entertaining an audience for 150 minutes a challenge: it’s just the run of the mill. Maybe the film industry believes they are giving the audience value for money, or maybe a length of over two hours gives the film a false sense of importance, a belief that the film contains so much vital information it begs to be seen in its fullest: nothing can be cut. Even films aimed at children and young teenagers are pushing people’s attention spans: the young being a demographic that can be considered as one which struggles the most to sit still and focus for more than a few hours at a time, yet the Harry Potter films each run at nearly three hours in length. Whenever I see a film duration of more than two hours I suddenly find myself trying to decide whether the film is worth the effort. Sitting in a cinema and paying for a two or three hour torture session is the last thing anyone wants, maybe if you’re lucky you’ll just be bored out of your mind for what will feel like an eternity. In spite of this, long films are still able to attract attention while simultaneously making 2001: a Space Odyssey feel short. This is not only a modern issue, long films have, of course, been prevalent throughout cinema history: the first feature length films were often over long and painfully slow, e.g. The Birth of a Nation. While there is no doubt there are many films that justify running into the second or third hour, one can’t help but wonder if producers need to enforce a little more economic approach to film-making and running times. After all, it is possible to say a lot in under 90 minutes, it’s even possible to make revolutionary films: creating rifts in film discourse and audiences forever, all in less than an hour and a half.
To prove that length has nothing to do with a film’s power, its emotion, its ability to change our perceptions of what cinema is capable of, I have come up with a list of nine films that come in at under 90 minutes (or exactly 90 minutes, depending on the ‘version’ or ‘cut). Best of all, this is a list of astonishing films for anyone who thinks to themselves, ‘I don’t have enough time to watch films, let alone serious cinema’, which we all do from time to time, to prove that you only need to sacrifice 90 minutes for a phenomenal film experience, not three hours.
Je t’aime, je t’aime (1968) Review
Claude Rider is the ideal candidate for a risky scientific experiment, he recently failed to commit suicide and still has no lust for life. When a group of scientists approach him and tell of their desire to send him back in time, he sees to reason to refuse the offer. The experiment is a partial success: Claude Rider is miraculously sent back exactly a year into his past. However, once he is meant to return to the present, he actually ends up sporadically flying through scattered remnants of his past, remaining in any one place for only a matter of moments.
Je t’aime, je t’aime is not that unlike many of Alain Resnais‘ earlier films, it probes the theme of memory in a disjointed narrative akin to Last Year in Marienbad and Hiroshima mon amour. In contrast to those early films, Je t’aime, je t’aime takes less stylistic and thematic risks and while it is well executed it is not ground-breaking. The film attempts to walk in the shoes of Last Year in Marienbad and Chris Marker’s La Jetée, turning these ideas into a more palatable, less experimental, experience whilst also harbouring a good sense of humour. Touching on a multitude of different episodes from Claude Rider’s recent past, Je t’aime, je t’aime compiles an image of a complicated character, gently unravelling the many facets of his personality: what makes him tick, how he falls in and out of love, and the ultimate conundrum: his reasons for attempting suicide. For what is lacks in originality Je t’aime, je t’aime remains compelling, amusing, and ultimately a very realistic portrait of a troubled man. Consider it a predecessor to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for those who are cynical at heart.
Norwegian Wood (2010) Review
The stifling pain of teenage love and death quivers at the heart of Anh Hung Tran‘s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s hit novel: Norwegian Wood. Murakami’s eccentric novels about men dressed as sheep, hallucinations at the bottom of a well, fish raining from the sky, glowing unicorn skulls, and a plethora of women with the most beautiful ears imaginable has gained him acclaim around the world, but it was the down-to-earth Norwegian Wood that turned Murakami into a superstar in Japan. A simple coming-of-age tale enables the eternal themes in Norwegian Wood to leap from the page onto the big screen. After the suicide of his best friend, Toru Watanabe becomes increasingly dissatisfied and disconnected with society. Too close to the dead, Toru attempts to reconnect to the living through meaningless sex, but it is his late best friend’s girlfriend, Naoko, with whom he falls in love. Together they search for a future: the dead will stay 18 forever but the living must go on. When Naoko is unable to move on from the past Toru has to decide if he will let himself drown in their shared grief or find a new life to live.
Anh Hung Tran’s subdued style of film-making in the almost mute The Scent of the Green Papaya solidified Tran’s skill as a director of atmosphere: someone who can make drama out of almost nothing. It is no wonder that Norwegian Wood succeeds in the moments when nothing is said and then clumsily falls apart when the drama reaches its most emotive peaks. Norwegian Wood begins to falter and crack along with the character’s psyches. Moody landscapes, rays of sunshine, the falling snow and a simple but powerful glance between characters are photographed with intoxicating reverence, capturing the essence of the film with more authenticity and cinematic appeal than the spoken performances. The changing of the seasons effortlessly dictates the flow of time: destroying and healing those who have chosen to continue living. The indulgent cinematography combined with the nostalgic charm of 1960′s Tokyo can woo an audience as easily as a girl flashing her eyes above her over-sized sunglasses can seduce Toru Watanabe. Melancholy oozes from every moment which is underlined by Jonny Greenwood’s delicate score and eerie silences are used to exemplify the harrowing darkness that lays at the heart of this story, but when Tran needs to pack his most powerful punch he misses his target. Somewhere beneath the glossy surface is a gut-wrenching drama with complicated characters but its hard to empathize with Toru who appears merely soulless and boring as opposed to lost amidst grief and existential angst. Norwegian Wood brims with surface appeal and sensual moments of pure emotional pain, but without the strength of the original work the audience will struggle to identify with the vague Toru, leaving the audience as lost and confused as Toru appears to be.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) Review
This latest offering from Thai auteur, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, is just part of his recent multi-platform art project called Primitive. Focusing on the single area of Nabua: combining the town’s legends and mythology with its political turbulence, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is the final chapter in the Primitive project. Uncle Boonmee is suffering from kidney failure and as he comes closer to death, spirits and ghosts are drawn closer to him. As Uncle Boonmee continues to explore his existence the film offers vignettes of what could be memories, past lives, or mere glimpses into the other-world. Weerasethakul successfully combines spiritual and physical existence in a way which is multifaceted and never patronizing or exceptionally romanticized.
What Weerasethakul creates, rejecting conventional narrative, is a film which is difficult to understand but easy to experience and admire for its dreamlike beauty. It is impossible to deny the love and attention Weerasethakul has given to the film; his view of the Thai landscape is breathtaking and every character is treated with utmost sensitivity. The overwhelming lust for light which was the centre of his previous films has, understandably, taken a back-seat to coincide with the much darker themes. It is however incredulous to claim light is not a prevalent theme in Uncle Boonmee, it no longer fills the screen and only penetrates darkness, creating contrasts between life and death. Few directors have been able to (let alone wanted to) create spiritual experiences for the big screen. Weerasethakul can be placed alongside Tarkovsky, Dreyer, and Bergman as a director who is able to translate the spiritual into moving images. It is perhaps regrettable to say that with its study of death and the embodiment of spirits, Uncle Boonmee becomes bogged down in its literal representations while alienating its audience with an overtly abstract narrative. These elements only obstruct the spiritualism it hopes to achieve; Syndromes and a Century (Weerasethakul 2006) succeeded as a spiritual experience without the need for conversations with spirits and dead relatives. Nonetheless, Uncle Boonmee remains a very accessible film in spite of its abstraction if the audience is able to let go its lack of cohesion. Instead of slow lingering shots, Weerasethakul keeps the film moving in all manner of directions, constantly introducing new ideas and images, it never stays in any one place too long. Motivated by a balance between sombre stoicism and tense disconcertion, some elements feel genuinely troubling and nightmarish while others are filled with an awe for life. The dark and perverse will interest audiences more than the humble conversations about farming and immigration, yet nothing seems frivolous or unnecessary no matter how open ended the film’s message and ideas.
It’s easy to get swept up in the dream that is Uncle Boonmee, to be enthralled by the exploration of a mythical world and wondrous landscape. Images and scenes will stay with you for days: drawing questions, creating conversations, and the film just begs to be re-watched. Apichatpong Weerasethakul is embarking on a new kind of cinema, he’s attempting to do something new in a time when people believe everything has already been said and done. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is, without a doubt, a shining light in what is a rather dark era for cinema.
Representations of ‘The Other’ in Hollywood Cinema
In classical Hollywood cinema, representation of black skin is coded in contrast of white skin to connote white superiority and self-regard as black inferiority. While this is mostly in regards to the image of black skin, this argument can be applied to other racial representations as well. Classical Hollywood’s representations of ‘the other’ races (encompassing all non-white races, I use ‘the other’ not to come across as racist myself, but to explain how Hollywood often represents non-white as an ‘otherness’) is used to reinforce ideas of white superiority; justifying Euro-American colonization and imperialism. To achieve this, ‘the other’ is placed in a static position in history, represented as violent savages in opposition to white colonization: they have no future and are given no past, no identity beyond their opposition to the Euro-American plight. ‘The other’ has two choices, to either fight against colonization and be destroyed, or to serve under a white master, helping them fight for Euro-American colonialism, either actively in a war or passively serving a master.
Raise the Red Lantern (1991) Film Focus
Upon its release in China, Raise the Red Lantern was withheld from distribution. With intense political turmoil and censorship in China, a question comes to mind: how, if at all, can the film be read as a criticism of China’s political and cultural identity? Yimou Zhang creates a stunning film, rich with colour and full of potent images of power and patriarchy, representing Confucianism and, by extension, an allegory of Communist China.
Yimou Zhang is one of the Fifth Generation film-makers, a group of film-makers in China who were first to graduate from the Beijing Film Academy after the Cultural Revolution. Fifth Generation film-makers’ first films were released in the 1980s and with new freedoms from the strict censorship enforced before and during the Cultural Revolution, they turned their backs on the style of previous Chinese cinema. Creating films which questioned China’s political past instead of propaganda style film making, the Fifth Generation film-makers up-heaved Chinese cinema’s narrative and aesthetic form. Zhang’s films were inspired by European cinema instead of China’s cinematic history and he saw those films as something to react against. Zhang once commented that the films that most influence him were “those really dreadful Chinese films from the sixties and seventies,” as they served as model of what not to do.
Cats and Film
I’ll come clean, I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of a crazy cat lady. And amongst other things I love, there’s not much better than the combination of two loves: film and cats. Sometimes when I’m studying film, writing an essay, or just reading essays, I have got into the habit of searching for photos of said people with cats. It makes the whole studying experience much more pleasurable when the theorist is pictured holding a cute little kitty. My favourite image is that of André Bazin with cat (as shown to the left). Recently I was writing about Maya Deren and there is an abundance of images of her with a cat. This only reminded me that there is a film I wanted to see, made by her husband Alexandr Hackenschmied, all about cats called The Private Life of a Cat. Not long ago I swooned over a Friskies viral advertisment called ‘Cat Diaries’ where we see footage shot by camera’s attached to cats’ collars, it’s truly heart-warming… if you’re a crazy cat lady and fan of films. But this is not enough, nor are all the videos on youtube, nor is a kitten in Clint Eastwood’s hat in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, nor is all the kittens that appear hidden in every possible place imaginable in Pudovkin’s Chess Fever enough!
Finally I was able to watch The Private Life of a Cat and I was very pleased, not only was it touching but it was also well executed. 2o minutes shows, in detail, two cats who fall in love and start a family (excluding the sex part but including a lot of the birthing part, thankfully). It’s nice to know that serious film studies can, on occasion, coincide with a cat obsession, and it’s nice to know that the camera’s obsession with cats existed before youtube and home-video TV shows. Ironically, perhaps, I watched the film The Private Life of a Cat on youtube, and I would recommend film/cat fans take a peak. And to resume to my starting point, here is Maya Deren with the female star of the film.
Don’t worry, I will now turn the crazy cat lady dial down.
The Illusionist (2010) Review
Based on a screenplay by Jacques Tati and bought to life by Sylvain Chomet, The Illusionist brings together two names who seem perfect for one-another. It takes the mind of someone who has animated fantastic silent (ish) comedies to bring a Monsieur Hulot-esque character back to life. A hapless Magician is witnessing the death of his art, rock stars and sultry singers are taking the place of what has become a tired and old fashion form of entertainment. Out of work and desperate for money he manages to find a job in a bar in a Scottish village where he meets a nieve girl who thinks he’s a bona fide wizard, that magic really exists. As she follows him in awe, he gets pleasure amusing the only person left who still believes in magic.
The Illusionist is melancholy at its funniest and most whimsical. While it manages to capture a time where magic was dying, it manages to revive the silent comedy. While the film has sound, it is so unimportant. The entire film is told with its visuals alone, with its delightfully charming animation that’s unafraid of the obtuse and garish, revelling in a unpolished scratchy style that remains breathtakingly beautiful. The visual comedy and sentimental story of a poor man and an innocent girl is more akin to a Chaplin film than Tati or previous Chomet films, it’s easy to draw a lot of similarities to Chaplin’s The Circus (1928). It’s pleasing to know that audiences can still be entrapped with silent comedies and that so much can be said in action alone. A simple story, adorably told, brimming with laughs and heartfelt moments, the poetry of The Illusionist can be felt long after the screening; the magic of cinema still exists.
Tokyo Sonata (2008) Review
Tokyo Sonata (2008) appears to have achieved a great deal of critical acclaim, it won the jury prize at Cannes and is being released under the Masters of Cinema series by Eureka. Tokyo Sonata tells the story of the collapse of a family in Tokyo. The father loses his high-profile job and is forced to hide his unemployment from his family, the mother is displeased with being ‘just a housewife’, the eldest son wants to join the US army and the youngest wants to learn to play the piano against his parents’ disapproval. The first half has many strengths and sets up hope as to what Tokyo Sonata can offer: a touching family portrait struggling through the current economic crisis, it reveals its cards slowly, with a touch of tragic humanity. Regrettably this falls apart, much like the family in the film, and disintegrates into a ridiculous farce. Tokyo Sonata is mostly let down by the script which, when the writer obviously couldn’t think of any way to express a characters feelings filmically, stoops to forcing characters to exclaim aloud what it is they’re thinking which is not only unbelievable, but very poorly executed.
The script thankfully denies tying up those lose ends for you, much of it being left open to interpretation, but the ending does lead to the kind of unbelievable sentimentality that even the worst kind of Hollywood films wouldn’t dare stoop to. Pardon the slight spoiler, but to attempt to convince the audience that a child, who has been learning to play the piano for six months without a piano to practice on at home, can become such an accomplished pianist, it is so patronizing it’s cringe-worthy.
It’s easy to compare Tokyo Sonata with Edward Yang’s superb Yi Yi (2000) as the themes and set up are similar and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Yi Yi was inspiration for the script. Regrettably, Tokyo Sonata is a very pale comparison, its script, cinematography, and stilted acting is void of poetry and has no semblance of real emotion. As the film aims to imbue the audience with an empty dissatisfaction with modern life, it needn’t have left the entire family devoid of any charisma or personality. If Yi Yi is a song to the struggles and beauty in the many facets of family life; Tokyo Sonata barely manages to hobble together an incomprehensible verse.
Congratulations Joe!
As the world already knows, Apichatpong Weerasethakul picked up the Palme d’Or this year for his film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. As I cannot comment on the film, not being privileged enough to see it yet, I will share something I wrote personally about his film Syndromes and a Century. I am only gutted as I was supposed to meet him in person this week, but due to the turbulent situation in Thailand at the moment the event has been cancelled.
“Syndromes and a Century is a project that will explore how we remember, how our sense of happiness can be triggered by seemingly insignificant things. It is an experiment in recreation of my parents’ lives before I was born, which also includes the lives of those who have touched me in the present day. It will be an interpretation of distant lives and of architecture that I remain fond of, along with contemporary ones that I have around me. Time is collapsed to mimic a pattern of remembering and to manifest my belief in the idea of reincarnation. We are constantly reborn, amassing our karma, and we learn from our successive lives in order to one day finally experience a true happiness.”
Written before Apichatpong Weerasethakul had begun production on Syndromes and a Century I use that piece of text to reiterate my admiration and love for his films. His films are elating experiences that shower you with abundant light and happiness. Even though we differ in our beliefs on reincarnation, his films manage to become a religious experience, even if in my eyes my religion is merely ‘film’. I would need too many words to begin to try and explain the impact of his films, both on the concept of what a film can be and and my personal emotions, and I don’t have the time to do it. I only hope more people can enjoy them and see the light within them. I feel I can safely hold him in league with Antonioni, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Godard, and Bergman. I only wish I could see Syndromes and a Century in the cinema again like I did at the Cambridge Film Festival (2007), to be overwhelmed by its beauty, perplexed by it, but overwhelmed by its imagery nonetheless. And then to, just a few weeks later, get lost in a hospital and be taken back to the film and feel a great sense of joy (something that shouldn’t be associated with hospitals or being lost). We need more cinema like this. We need more people to CARE about cinema like this.
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Edit: Things turned around and he was able to make it to the BFI to talk about his project Primitive. I got to see him, and I would like to remind people to check out his installation, Phantoms of Nabua, at the BFI Southbank while it’s still there.
