Gateway Cinephiles

Film Diary: Beowulf

2007
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Viewed: March 23, 2008
Format: DVD - Paramount (2008)

Film Diary: Los Muertos

2004
Director: Lisandro Alonso
Viewed: March 23, 2008
Format: DVD - FACETS (2008)

Film Diary: Lake of Fire

2006
Director: Tony Kaye
Viewed: April 20, 2008
Format: DVD - Velocity / Thinkfilm (2008)

Film Diary: Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

2003
Director: Gore Verbinski
Viewed: April 17, 2008
Format: DVD - Disney (2003)

3-Minute Intro: The Rules of the Game (La Règle du Jeu)

Screened: April 15, 2008
Format: DVD - Criterion (2004)
Selected By: Andrew

It’s difficult to appreciate the venomous controversy that accompanied the 1939 release of Jean Renoir’s tragic farce The Rules of the Game. In France, the film was jeered and denounced, and it allegedly even provoked an arson attempt. When war broke out, it was banned as too demoralizing for French audiences. Decades later and an ocean away, Renoir’s masterpiece seems relatively innocuous, a black comedy about jealous, petty personalities among the aristocracy and their servants. Today, the film’s extraordinary visual artistry and thematic density are what emerge. This is a work to ruminate on, to explore, to revisit again and again.

The son of impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean Renoir was affiliated with his country’s left-wing Popular Front between the World Wars. It was during this period that Renoir created his most renowned films, such as Grand Illusion and The Human Beast. Following the disaster of The Rules of the Game, the director made numerous films in America, India, and Europe, although he never again matched his 1930s success. The original negative of Rules was destroyed during the war, but in the 1950s the film was painstakingly reconstructed. Its reputation has flourished with time, and it now is regarded as both one of Renoir’s finest, and one of the most outstanding and influential works in cinema history.

The plot is an intricate puzzle box of affection, loyalty, and rivalry. The film flits between the upstairs world of faithless, selfish, cruel aristocrats, and the downstairs world of the equally ill-behaved servants. Overall, however, Renoir’s viewpoint is not judgmental but sardonic and melancholy. Ambling between the two worlds is the director himself as the charming buffoon Octave, easily the film’s most compelling character. Keeping up with the story of The Rules of the Game is a challenge. First time viewers should instead concentrate on Renoir’s use of deep focus and a constantly shifting camera, which capture a dizzying kaleidoscope of interactions. Frequently lauded as one of the finest French-language films of all time, The Rules of the Game may be one the greatest films in any language about social relationships. It is a work that effortlessly captures the complexity, absurdity, and perils of human connection.

Film Diary: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

2007
Director: Tim Burton
Viewed: April 14, 2008
Format: DVD - Dreamworks (2008)

Film Diary: I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal

2007
Director: Richard Trank
Viewed: April 14, 2008
Format: DVD - Starz / Anchor Bay (2007)

Quick Review: Shine a Light

2008
Director: Martin Scorsese
Viewed: April 12, 2008
Format: IMAX Theatrical Print

Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light, depicting a two-night Rolling Stones performance at the Beacon Theater, aims for something a little higher than mutual artistic backslapping, just not much higher. This is Stones worship at its purest, but that purity is fairly stunning. The undisciplined tendency that has at times infected Scorsese’s more recent dramatic work is nowhere to be found in this endeavor. If nothing else, Shine a Light is a work of cinematic virtuosity. Shot with plethora of cameras placed jaw-droppingly close to the action, it boasts an intimacy that vividly captures the Stones’ everlasting fire and their sheer joy at performing. It’s dizzying to contemplate the challenge that this film must have been to edit. Scorsese doesn’t strive for the genuine exploration of Gimme Shelter, but he does utilize the medium to discover something akin to a live concert experience, yet also something different and distinctly cinematic. Shine a Light has an undeniable and sustaining energy, but there’s not much to it other than great music from artists you’ll never be this close to again. If that’s enough for you—and it should be—you’ll regret missing an opportunity to catch it in IMAX.

Quick Review: The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher)

2007
Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky
Viewed: April 10, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

The Counterfeiters presents the morally knotted tale of Operation Bernhard, the Nazis’ effort to reproduce the British pound using Jewish counterfeiters. The film centers on the experience of master counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch, portrayed with grim precision by Austrian Karl Markovics. Like most capable dramas about World War II, the film treads a satisfactory balance between the shorthand characterization necessary for a feature length production and pockets of richer exploration. Director Stefan Ruzowitzky never works any real cinematic magic, but he does the minimum the material deserves by telling a fascinating story quite well. The counterfeiters’ surreal existence as valuable but despised craftsmen is the story’s most appealing angle, but it remains somewhat underdeveloped in favor of stock dramatic tension and twists. Ruzowitzky finds some intriguing approaches here and there, as when he highlights the fractures between subgroups within the Jewish prisoner population (habitual criminals, Communists, etc.) Still, there’s something more than a little disappointing about a film where the concept is more electric than the execution. In the end, The Counterfeiters is a notable addition to the swelling body of Holocaust dramas, if only for its unusual subject matter and fine performances.

Film Diary: The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep

2007
Director: Jay Russell
Viewed: April 13, 2008
Format: DVD - Columbia (2008)