Spike Lee- Power through Freedom

       Currently a hugely controversial figure for his commentary and actions, Spike Lee is, for some reason, hated on the internet, although really, they should love him. Currently, it's hard for me to think of a filmmaker whose voice through his films is so loud and consistent throughout his body of work. However, that's not saying every film is the same, in fact, the truth couldn't be further from that.
       Lee's real-life, and thus cinematic, home is Brooklyn, and thus most of his films are not only set there, but reek of the attitude and life of Brooklyn. Lee got his start from independent filmmaking, and despite a relationship with Universal Pictures, has remained very much an independent filmmaker, denying the industry of content that would typically be consumed by the masses. Because of this, the "controversy" the internet brewed over his kickstarter is particularly absurd. The internet seemed to have zero problem with the Veronica Mars movie, even though that was being made by more people and asked for much more money. Lee has stated that he crowd-funded before Kickstarter existed, and that is very much true. 2012's Red Hook Summer was self-funded, and the film is truly very good.
      However, RHS, like much of Lee's work, features a trademark of his style some would see as a weakness- his pacing is a bit odd, and some aspects of the story are rushed or simply forgetten. FOr example, the revelation about the reverend in Red Hook Summer comes out of seemingly nowhere, while a building of a ten-year marriage of Bleek and Indigo in Mo' Better Blues is rushed at the end, allowing the story to end in a cycle, a neat technique but one that isn't needed.
         Lee is one of the rare modern filmmakers who constantly feels the need to innovate and experiment with his work, adding in odd camera angles and story structures. Perhaps one of the best example of this appears in Mo' Better, where Bleek calls the two women in his life by the others' name. the scene is shot as if they were in the same room, with Bleek turning different directions to address the different woman.
       Lee's career can be best defined by two films- Do the Right Thing, which I previously discussed at length, and Four Little Girls, a powerful documentary about the bombing of the Birmingham Baptist Church at the peak of the Civil Rights Movement. Lee understands this to a degree. After DtRT, Lee made MBM, certainly a good film, but far from the sprawling, powerful, and poignant the preceded it. Lee's career may have been in jeopardy if he followed Do the Right Thing with Jungle Fever, a similarly themed film that pales in comparison due to some hokey and goofy moments, despite some really great scenes and powerful performances.
        Lee does not get the reputation he deserves, often just criticized for controversial statements. Lee currently takes heavy heat because of his remaking of Oldboy, an inexplicably popular Korean film with a cheap, stupid ending. Even if one likes the original film, one should realize that it's not an unbridled masterpiece, and how interesting it would be to see Lee tell the story in his own way, with his own characteristic flair

Luis Bunuel Retrospective Pt. 3- LAST FILMS IN FRANCE

       After Simon of the Desert, a short personal film, Bunuel moved permanently went to work in France. Bunuel still lived in Mexico, but went back to France every few months to make a film. Here, Bunuel slowly became more avant-garde and unlearned much of his commercial narrative flair. This work is, in my opinion, his most daring, admirable and ambitious, and much of it has not been replicated since. All of Bunuel’s work from this period is preserved with high-quality prints, and is readily available, much of it published by the well-respected Criterion Collection.

       Belle de Jour and Tristana, both starring Catherine Deneuve, stick with rather traditional narratives, not that is in any way a bad thing. Denueve plays similar characters- repressed young woman restricted by their men. in Belle De Jour, Denueve is a sexually repressed housewife, while in Tristana, she is essentially held captive by her uncle, Fernando Rey in a role similar to Viridiana’s domineering uncle. Both films return to Bunuel’s themes of repression, and Tristana in particular features several religiously charged images, such as the massive bell over Toledo, showing the showing the power of religion over all.

       Bunuel’s late career is defined by a “trilogy” of absurd, abstract films he made in the late sixties and early seventies- The Milky Way, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and The Phantom of Liberty. All three have loose, sprawling narratives, and are only linked thematically. The Milky Way deals exclusively with religion, showing Bunuel’s issue with the organization, not the belief in Christ or in Christ’s teaching.

       The Milky Way follows two pilgrims on the Way of St. James, making their way to see a shrine (The Way of St. James was the original title of the bright strip of stars in the sky, and thus the film’s title). The two come across various oddities, including blind fortune tellers, odd banquets, and executions. The two seem to traverse through time and space, meeting figures dressed in all kinds of garb, from modern suits, to fancy cloaks, to simple sheets like Romans. The film ends with a powerful scene, showing Christ, who we see throughout the film as a real human, laughing and such, heal two blind men and ignore their requests to have their first sights explained to them while he states that his mission on earth is to tear humanity apart with his beliefs. The healed blind men follow Christ with their walking sticks, unable to cross a ditch without feeling across it. Although they now have the power of sight, they can’t see the world better at all, which is Bunuel’s opinion on religious enlightenment.

        Discreet Charm broadened its attack, mocking the upper society’s ambitions and fears, still laying into Christianity, with the powerful character of the vengeful priest, forgiving his parents’ killer on the guy’s deathbed moments before blowing his head off. The plot travels through dreams, stories, and dreams within dreams, focusing on a group of upper class friends who want to dine together, but simply cannot. The film is widely regarded as Bunuel’s masterpiece, winning him the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, and finally thrusting him into the public forefront. Sure, Viridiana, Exterminating Angel and Belle de Jour were well known, but Discreet Charm surpasses them all in name recognition.

         Bunuel then returned to some good ol’ fashioned surrealism with the ever-bizarre and free Phantom of the Liberty, a sprawling series of loosely connected vignettes, some basically operating as ideas Bunuel found interesting or humorous, jotted down, and then filmed. He explores all of his favorite themes in depth, with a young man sleeping with his Aunt, priests drinking and gambling but repelled by sex, and a young girl reported missing despite being in the same room as her parents and the police, and all adults directly addressing her. Perhaps the funniest and strangest image is when Bunuel returns to dining, having a group of upper-class friends sit around the table on toilets, talking only about deification, while the mere mention of food is repulsive. One man pulls up his pants, excuses himself, and asks the maid quietly where the dining room is. He talk himself in a small stall and opens a cabinet, revealing a chicken dinner he cuts into. The vignette satirizes the criteria of social selection- easily we can see how eating could be considered gross, and we could be trained to accept pooping as normal. In fact, pooping is more natural than easting, and much more universal.

         Bunuel’s final film, That Obscure Object of Desire, returns to a more traditional narrative but with a good amount of experimentation. The film tells the story of an older man, Fernando Rey, who falls madly in love with a young woman, played by two different actresses in alternating scenes. One actress is kind to our hero, while the other one openly taunts him and denies him of sex actively. The film is undercut with a deeply paranoid plot of terrorist takeover, showing the certain triviality of Rey’s quest.

        Four years after Obscure Object, Bunuel died at age eighty-three. Although I wouldn’t say he was forgotten, many of his films have been overlooked and are essentially unavailable in America. Tristana was just made available this year, while only three films- Obscure Object, Tristana, and Belle de Jour are available on Blu-Ray in America (although one can easily get an import of Discreet Charm and L’Age D’or on the high definition disc). Besides that, many of his later films are on DVD, while many of his Mexican films, I’d even say the bulk, are not even on a major DVD. Many exist on terrible prints, and some are not even available on a torrent website. Bunuel certainly gets respect, but certainly demands more. I urge that some company work on getting this master’s prints and finally doing them justice. I know there are financial factors at play, but I’m sure that consumers exist, and if a company like Criterion picks up the rights, the market will be created with Criterion’s tendency to build up buzz for under-appreciated titled, like what it did with the Pierre Etiax collection earlier this year. Perhaps Bunuel’s “lesser” works can be collected in an eclipse set, while many could be stand-alone releases.

         Bunuel still hold audiences to this day. His style is very straight-forward and unpretentious, nearly invisible at times but always working and shocking audiences with powerful themes and imagery. Thirty Years after his death, Bunuel is still remembered fondly and loved by many, and hopefully major interest in him will grow in the upcoming years.

Luis Bunuel Retrospective- Pt. 2- THE MEXICAN JOURNEYMAN

       Luis Bunuel was specifically brought in to Mexico to be a commercial director, and ultimately was, working mainly in melodrama, yet always including a personalized surreal touch that he had perfected. To quote the Swedish mater Ingmar Bergman, "Bunuel always made Bunuel films." Bunuel's style always surfaced in one way or another, be it in dream sequences, themes, or certain images. Bunuel made the bulk of his filmography in Mexico, from La Grand Casino to Simon of the Desert. 
        This is the area where Bunuel receives his distinction of under appreciated and often forgotten, at least in America. Many of these films are completely unavailable in America on DVD, or at least very, very, rare. I admittedly have not even seen the bulk of them since they are just unavailable. Terrible Mexican video companies own the rights to many of the films, and utterly refuse to sell them or even release them on DVD. The subtitles often have typos, and the image is a true travesty.
       Bunuel's earliest film of the period that garnered serious attention was Los Olvidados, a Bunuel-take on the neo-realist movement that was capturing world cinema. Bunuel takes his camera to the streets, using non-actors and real settings to show the plight of youths forgotten by society. Bunuel's major touch comes in the form of a dream sequence, with slow-motion feathers floating to the ground, a la Vigo's Zero du Conduit and a bloodied dead boy laughing on the ground. The sequence is truly stunning, and hides the otherwise bleak nature of the film for just a moment. Bunuel is brutal and relentless in his portrayal of poverty.
       Another major film for the period is El, returning to literally examine the theme of sexual repression and obsession, showing a man who loves the very idea of a woman so much he is willing to do anything to hold onto her. The film is stacked with Bunuel's religious iconography and carries serious criticism for the Catholic church, where a priest not only refuses to help the tortured heroine, but actually rats her out to her husband. This is an early direct example of Bunuel's treatment of religious hypocrisy, which was later visited time and time again.
       Again, I must lament the fact that so many of these films are unavailable, including Ensayo de un Crimen, Susana, Subida Au Cielo, and Wuthering Heights. It represents a huge blind spot in our consciousness of a great filmmaker who overcame producers to stay true to his vision. I dream that one day a company like Criterion will pick up these titles and finally do them justice.
       Bunuel's most acclaimed film of the period is Nazarin, a film that is thematically similar to his well-known follow-up. Nazarin follows Father Nazzario, an idealistic and certainly good Catholic priest who risks his reputation for a prostitute and constantly battles the church. The story is a critique of the cold church and of idealism and general, yet it also parodies the story of Christ. Nazario is often mistaken as a "second coming" type figure. Two of the prostitutes follow the man to the world's end, even though he urges them against it, saying he is just a humble man. Nazario arrives at a village where a young girl is sick. The villagers urge him to perform a miracle, which he refuses, but he does pray for the girl. The next morning, the woman praise the priest, but he insists God intervened. However, Nazario is silent when the group stumbles upon a massive disaster, and is unable to help anyone, even unable to hear a woman's confession as she is fixated only on seeing her lover. The film's final image is incredibly powerful, involving intense despair and a pineapple. Although I covered what seems like a good amount, much more is in store in the film and  do not wish to spoil.
       The follow-up was made not in Mexico, but was instead Bunuel's return to Spain. I don't mean to exaggerate, but Viridana may be my all-time favorite film, and is, in my opinion, cinematic perfection. The story is mainly a critique of idealism, but dives in against organized religion, obsession, lust, chastity, poverty, and sensitivity. It's a truly deep and spellbinding work that follows a cold young nun as she visits her uncle. Perhaps that may not sound thrilling, but I urge anyone to watch it. I do not wish to give away a single detail of the plot explicitly. The film's message is best seen in an odd image Bunuel presents to us- a character sees a dog tied to the bottom of a cart. The character is shocked, as if the tired Dog stops moving, it will be strangled. The character attempts to convince the owner to let the dog in the cart, and when  the owner refuses, the character outright buys the dog, much like what our heroine Viridiana does with the beggars. However, as out character walks away with the dog, another cart passes, which has another dog walking under it, tied to the axle. It's a hugely powerful and slightly abstract image that perfectly captures the film.
        Bunuel's next film, The Exterminating Angel, made again in Mexico but attempting to look like France, offers another abstract analogy, this time taking on the ruling class directly. A dinner party, for unknown reasons, cannot leave a room. In such a simple, absurd concept, Bunuel shows us his opinion of the human lab rats that make up the upper class, stuck in the regime of parties and excess. AT the film's end, the priest and church goers in a Catholic cathedral suffer the same fate.
        This period of Bunuel's career is characterized with his most accessible and straight-forward films, as they were made with the intention of profitability first and foremost. Bunuel's later career is defined by him attempting to unlearn the narrative trick of this period, creating more challenging and difficult films.
     

Luis Bunuel retrospective- Part 1- EARLY LIFE AND EXPERIMENTS

       July 29th, 1983 (30 years ago, today) marked the death of Luis Bunuel. To some who consider themselves fans of film, this may not mean anything, while it may mean everything to some. Luis Bunuel, despite his sterling reputation (for example, They Shoot Pictures lists him as one of the three "master" directors, meaning a perfect 10, along with Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock), is criminally unwatched and undervalued among the general public. Many of his films are rare and hard to find, but I'll get into that later.
       Now, I have written on Bunuel much before, but now, I just don't want to republish something, which I've done on a few occasions. My writings on Bunuel earlier were academic and lengthy. Perhaps I will publish it at a later date, but for now, I will write new material. I may borrow from my previous writings, however.
       Now, perhaps a little bit of background on Bunuel is needed to truly understand him. Bunuel was born in 1901 in Spain, and grew up in a religious aristocratic family, two relations which run deeply through pretty much every film he has ever done. Additionally, Bunuel admits in his (excellent) biography that he was very sexually oppressed, another constant theme. When he was eighteen, he went of to University in Madrid, where he met several creative minds that like Federico Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dali, with whom he would be closely affiliated.
       Bunuel's artistic awakening came in Paris in the late 1920s. At this time, he allied with many of the surrelists, such as Max Ernst. One of the most fascinating parts of Bunuel's biography The Last Sigh is that the book works as a first-hand report of the surrealist movement, and Bunuel really dives into what the movement was in his eyes- less artistic, and more of a new system of reality which rejected everything society cherished. In Paris, Bunuel worked as an assistant for the early French silent director Jean Epstien.
       In 1929, Bunuel and Dali set out to make a film with funds Bunuel secured from his mother, despite her never actually seeing the film, and never expressing any interest in doing so. The result was Un Chien Andalou, which still is Bunuel's most popular film, although it does not show off the director's skills sufficiently. Bunuel's genius was in story-telling, and Un Chien  is pure non-narrative, and Bunuel stated several times that it is supposedly total nonsense. I must admit that when I was an early teenager I first heard of Bunuel through Un Chien, where he was essentially just "the guy that's not Dali."
       Un Chien Andalou had an instant and massive influence, specifically for its odd structure and bizarre images, which in fact does capture much of Bunuel's essence. Perhaps one of cinema's most iconic images is the woman being held by a man (who is actually Bunuel) as we see a cloud slice through the moon. Then we see an eye sliced (where, yes, the name of this blog comes from) with plasma oozing from the slit. It's instantly memorable, as is another fantastic image, of a man weighed down by a dead donkey, a grand piano, and two perplexed priests (one of whom was Dali), which represents a recurring Bunuel theme- the strains of upper society and religion on all aspects of one's life. Dali's influence can be felt in many of the images, such as ants crawling through a man's hand. Bunuel's dreams were much more rooted in a worldly reality than Dali's, which kept him grounded and decidely unpretentious.
       Next, Dali and Bunuel collaborated one more time before breaking their partnership permanently. This film was L'Age D'Or and is certainly much more Bunuel's than Dali's. The collaboration was fading quickly due to the emergence of Galla Dali, Dali's falling out with the surrealists, and that the duo simply wasn't as inspired together as they once were. The film was just over an hour long, and bore the distinction of being one of the earliest sound films made in France. The film is certainly a spiritual sequel to Un Chien and resembles it like no other part of Bunuel's filmography. Here, Bunuel revisits many of the same themes, but takes an extra blade out towards the church with the final scene, which is a reenactment of a scene from De Sade's 120 Days of Sodom with Jesus as the perverse duke. The Christ figure comforts a young girl, leads her back into the cave, and after a scream, he emerges, now without a beard. The final image is a cross adorned in scalps of women, which implies violence against woman is the trademark of church history.
        Compared to Bunuel's later filmography, his first two films are unique and worth visiting, but certainly do not reflect Bunuel's filmography at all. Bunuel was so much more than chocking imagery, and I have a tough time getting some people to watch any of his films if they are familiar and dislike his trademark eye slice. L'Age D'or shocked France so much that it caused riots and was banned by the government until 1980. Bunuel fled France, not returning until the 1960s. He went to Spain, where he filmed the thirty minute Las Hurdes, financed for a minimal amount of money.
        Las Hurdes receives a good amount of recognition for its status as an early documentary, and one of the earliest with such a political statement like showing the crippling poverty of regions in Spain. We see several shocking images again, but now, they are rooted within reality. We see close ups of a young girls mouth, as we hear that in a few days, the toddler will be dead. A donkey is stung to death by a hoard of bees while orchestral music and a dry narration goes forth. Bunuel again seizes an opportunity to attack a favorite target by focusing on a massive structure among this wasteland- a catholic cathedral, of course.
        Las Hurdes again caused huge controversy, halting Bunuel from making any films from years to come. Bunuel fled Spain for the United States on the heels of the Spanish Civil War, where he would have certainly been viewed as a political threat subject to assassination. Bunuel landed in Los Angeles at first, living with Charlie Chaplin for some time (Chaplin allegedly used to scare his daughter, Geraldine, by telling her images from Un Chien Andalou  before bedtime) and then worked at the studio. Eventually, his wife came over with his two sons, and the director moved to New York, where he was on the MoMa board before Communist ties forced him to resign. Bunuel was broke in New York with no job and no prospects, until an old friend living in Mexico contacted him with a directing opportunity. The year was 1947, and Bunuel had not been behind a camera in fifteen years, and had never even made a feature length narrative, but he accepted the job to make La Gran Calavera.