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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 09, 2008 - 01:15 am: | |
Anyone else seen this? I watched it this evening and it's kind of blown me away, but in rather a quiet, subdued manner. What an extraordinary film. I still haven't quite processed everything about it, but it's left me feeling...well, complex. :-/ |
Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 09, 2008 - 06:27 pm: | |
Wonderful film, yes. Gentle and violent at the same time. That scene with the boy and the fire is incredible. It reminds me of STALKER. I love that kind of SF. |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 09, 2008 - 10:27 pm: | |
I had a feeling (and am glad) that you'd like that film, Joel - it has a certain Lane quality. Yes, the scene at the fire is...I can't even begin to describe it. Beautiful and horrifying at the same time.
When Haneke gives us films like this one, CACHE and THE PIANO TEACHER, no one else can touch him.
I've never really liked STALKER - although it's a film I feel I should enjoy. I've tried to watch it at least twice, and each time I fail to make it even half way. Loved Tarkovsky's MIRROR, though, especially the scene with the wind in the field. That's an extraordinary moment. |
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.145.131.124
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - 05:37 pm: | |
I watched Stalker! My impression was that it was all talk, that they never left the table, it was a film of where conversation really went when it was good. |
Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.108.25.66
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - 09:22 pm: | |
I think you may have another film in mind, Tony. The STALKER I mean is quite low on dialogue. A few people wandering through a ruined lansdscape, some of it underground. |
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.145.131.124
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - 10:03 pm: | |
No - meant they were talking in a pub at the beginning, then when we saw them at the end they were suddenly sitting as they had been at the beginning, as if nothing had happened. I didn't mean it was talky - I mean it was akin to 'it was all a dream'. Sorry I didn't make that clear. |
Adriana (Adriana)
Username: Adriana
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.230.239.233
| | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 05:19 am: | |
I really liked Stalker.
Saw TIME OF THE WOLF at the film festival here, the year Haneke made it. I was eager to see his latest, and remember that I wasn't disappointed. I also remember though, that I thought it was a little too relentless even for Haneke - by which I mean that there was no contrast.
There's a lovely line in the Leonard Cohen song ANTHEM that goes "There is a crack, in everything -- that's how the light gets in."
And I feel that the spirit of that line (which is so profound and so true) was essentially something that was missing from TOTW. More specifically I remember feeling that in that world with NO hope - the bleakness and devastation of the horrific reality had less gravity. Less power. LESS HONESTY.
Light and dark must exist in all worlds (IMHO) it's just a matter of how you balance them (and indeed sometimes just a touch - even if it's just a tease or a means of providing contrast or commentary is enough). After all, one can not exist without the other.
Nonetheless, Haneke rocks.
|
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
| | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 09:15 am: | |
Well, I thought TOTW was Haneke's least bleak film, in the terms that it did contain a glimmer of hope.
#############SPOILERS#################
For instance, the boy didn't step into the fire; he was instead comforted by one of racist men ("You were willing to do it, and that's what counts"). Also, the shot at the end, through the train windows, could either be seen as a reminder of what had been lost or the fact that the train was still running, and might even reach them. |
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.145.131.124
| | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 10:12 am: | |
A - I agree. I've been thinking about it for long while in fact, that stories serve a purpose and it IS to give support to us as people. A story can be as grim as it gets but it must also offer this sense that someone understands, and you are not alone. Also - again - when i saw roeg he said this thing that I agree with; that a moment (in art) should try and contain everything, woven like tapestry, and that it was possible to do.
I liked Stalker, too. Some folk say it's dull but for me it was really like being taken somewhere, which is often enough. |
Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
| | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 12:05 pm: | |
I found Stalker so unaccountably disturbing the first time I saw it, having recorded it in the early days of Channel 4, that for the only time in my life I didn't speed a tape past the advertising breaks. The film seemed to have the same effect Aickman has on Gary F (which I don't mean as any kind of complaint). |
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.23.233.246
| | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 12:48 pm: | |
Yes! I find some shows hard to watch without ads. We need them to gather ourselves back up. |
Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
| | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 01:08 pm: | |
And put the kettle on. |
Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
| | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 01:48 pm: | |
STALKER's not depressing, though, is it? It's about transcendence, and you need somewhere grotty to transcend from. It utterly transported me. SOLARIS is a bit clunky, though. |
Adriana (Adriana)
Username: Adriana
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.230.239.233
| | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 03:29 pm: | |
Really? Clunky? SOLARIS is one of my favorite films. I should watch it again, but in my memory it was close to perfection...
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
| | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 03:46 pm: | |
Transcendence of things so bad they taint heaven. Like the Ligotti story 'Mrs Rinaldi's Angel'. |
Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.154
| | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 04:29 pm: | |
Some of the shots in SOLARIS are inflection they don't need, almost like an actor leans on a line For example, the sequence with teacups in the rain near the start has a (to my mind) gratuitous shot of the lead character looking at the teacups in the rain.
"Transcendence of things so bad they taint heaven."
Now that's a depressing idea. I must be getting happier, better, because I now see such misery as pointing in the wrong direction from the truth, as a mental problem of a temporarily lost individual, not as a metaphysical one. |
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.23.233.246
| | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 04:30 pm: | |
That's my problem! My heroine in my book needs to transcend some bad place, but the place I've put her in is quite nice.
Shit! |
Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.154
| | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 04:30 pm: | |
"Some of the shots in SOLARIS have an inflection they don't need..." |