UnholyBlackMetal Reviews

L'Avventura (1960)

A brutal study of alienation.

[10/10 · 1 August 2007]

Having recently seen L'Avventura and Scenes from a Marriage back to back they seem as different as it is possible to be. Yet they do share a common ground, namely humanity's quest for love and understanding and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that lie in the way. But whereas Bergman's film has moments of true warmth and happiness, Antonioni's L'Avventura is as brutally cold as a Scandinavian winter.

Plot summary is not entirely important (and would spoil potential surprises), suffice to say that the movie is uniquely structured and may not proceed the way you expect it to. There is a mystery, and romance; but not in any traditional sense. The men and women of this film stumble through a loveless, desolate Italy, occasionally pausing for forced, wretched couplings. Alienation and the inability for humans to connect to one another have never been so painfully presented in film.

While discussing the guilt felt in betraying a mutual friend a woman asks "How can it be that it takes so little to change, to forget?" to which the man responds, "It takes even less." Before one of the films many desperate scenes of impersonal copulation the woman cries out in a fit of existential despair, "I feel as though I don't know you!" to which the man responds, "Aren't you happy? You get to have a new fling." The film is so brutally cynical about friendship, love and human interaction that it feels unreal. Strange alien landscapes, magnificently filmed among the rocky islands around Italy serve to underline the insurmountably barren distances between the characters. And as they grope and fumble for some kind of connection in the darkness that surrounds them, the viewer is pulled into their mire as well.

When they are not desperately searching for some kind of connection with each other, the characters struggle to come to terms with their own absurd existence. A man knocks over a bottle of ink, destroying an art student's in-progress drawing. A woman makes faces in a mirror at herself. Another woman pretends to see a shark in the ocean she is swimming in. None of these distractions are remotely successful.

By the time the film has reached its unbelievably cynical ending (dependant on one of the most effective uses of a musical score in film history), it becomes clear. These people have lost their way.

This overwhelming bleakness seems like it would create an unbearable viewing experience, but there is a truth to it all as well. Companionship is a basic human need, and it can often seem impossibly difficult to form any real connection. However, what is important is that it only seems that way, it is not impossible. Antonioni has shown us only one possible outcome. By watching a movie filled with people slouching towards oblivion, unable to form even the most basic human bond, the mind rebels. There must be another way

Scenes from a Marriage (1973)

My second favorite movie of all time

[10/10 · 1 August 2007]

Scenes from a Marriage is a film about a breakup. We are not talking about some ephemeral youthful relationship, but a happy marriage of many years between a couple who truly feel they are happy together.

Yet cracks become visible, and soon the whole structure comes tumbling down as the once happy couple spends the next 15 years of their lives trying to make sense of it all. The film (aired in Sweden as a 6 part miniseries) is 5 hours of the most intense, painful, emotional conversations ever committed to celluloid. It is filmed almost entirely in close-up with sparse lighting and no music. I have watched it multiple times and by the end of the emotionally grueling experience it feels as though you have lived through each moment Johan and Marianne have experienced, no matter how far from your actual life any one detail might be.

That may not seem like the most pleasant viewing experience, but I should add that the film is not quite as harrowing as my description might make it seem. Yes, intense doesn't even begin to describe it, but Bergman has created the film with such honesty that there is no manipulation or unnecessary suffering. Even the immortal Eric Rohmer has never displayed this level of understanding into basic human relationships. Again, there is no manipulation here; Bergman would never stoop so low as to include suffering merely for the sake of additional drama. What is actually present in every second of the film is simply many lifetimes worth of wisdom on love, loss and moving on.

There are no easy answers in Scenes from a Marriage. The film is an emotional roller-coaster from start to finish. The person who is handling things the best will just as often have hit a new low when they are revisited down the road. The couple's bond will never disappear and yet they can never be what they were to each other. Old feelings resurface, old wounds reopen, old passions return and throughout it all Sven Nykvist's camera does not flinch. No film has done more with such a stark palate of images.

What elevates the film to "second favorite movie ever" level for me is not just the insight into human interaction, though that is my favorite subject matter in film. Scenes from a Marriage is not content to merely show what the loss of a loved one is like, Bergman also has a point beyond a simple documentation of the dissolution of a marriage.

By the final chapter, perfectly titled "In the Middle of the Night in a Dark House Somewhere in the World", an epiphany is reached. Johan and Marianne do not necessarily "get back together" or "never see each other again", but a certain level of acceptance is reached. That which can never be understood, which no one can put into words, and which has no solution is somehow grasped in the final scenes of this magnificent movie. Like a fleeting glimpse of the sun from inside a cave, all the mysteries of life and love briefly make sense.

While I never leave a viewing of Scenes from a Marriage feeling any less confused about the grand questions of life, I can't help but suspect that for a time during its brief 5 hours I almost had it. What more could any artist want from their viewer?

Mirror (1975)

My Favorite movie of all time.

[10/10 · 1 August 2007]

There is a scene in Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror where a young child looks through a book of art. The camera is close, showing only the pages of the book and the child's hand as he flips from picture to picture. Occasionally he will stop and linger on a favorite drawing. It is obvious that the book is a treasured possession, whose pictures have yet to lose their magic for the young boy. At one point a leaf, pressed between the pages, comes into view only to be swallowed up again.

This seemingly innocuous scene, halfway through the movie, is just one small example of why The Mirror is unquestionably my favorite movie ever. The film is the pure essence of nostalgia and each viewing is a revelation of memories I had long thought lost. I too had certain favorite books that I would turn to over and over again, flipping through their pages and taking comfort in the familiar pictures. I too would often press flowers and leaves between the pages of books with my parents.

Watching this movie feels like memories of the past flooding back from some forgotten abyss. The grey rainy skies, the kittens licking up cream, the flickering kerosene lantern, the sledding on the hill, the small junk pile in the forest, the snow covered trees, the wooden floors and furniture, the windswept fields, the log fence, all of these things are important images from my childhood. And yet there is far more to The Mirror than that.

Tarkovsky reaches beyond mere concrete memories. Many moments in the film have an almost mystical appeal. The slow static shot of the disappearing hand print on the table mesmerizes the eye until the final trace has gone. The bottle that inexplicably rolls off the table seems to act of its own volition. The man walking away in a great field of grass who turns to the camera just as one mighty gust of wind sweeps across the field towards the viewer and is gone. Scenes such as these are joined seamlessly with the movie and serve to reinforce the almost dreamlike reality we are presented with.

The music, selected from Pergolesi, Purcell, and J.S. Bach is, amazingly, equal to the images. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the superlative final scene set to Bach's monumental opening chorus from St. John's Passion. It is the single most moving scene I have ever viewed on film, its central images consisting of little more than a woman biting her lip and a child shouting a great life affirming cry to the skies while Bach's painfully beautiful music builds to an epic climax. The perfect union of film and music found in this scene is staggering in its power.

I suspect I am not the only one who considers himself a kindred spirit to The Mirror. Growing up in rural Kansas without a great deal of money surely helps, but the images are more universal than the tone of these passages lets on. Perhaps that is part of The Mirror's appeal: to those who identify with it, it seems as though the movie was made only for them.

This theory gains a great deal of credence when I think of the parts of The Mirror I don't feel such a strong connection to. I had no lack of a father figure as a child yet that dominant plot point somehow doesn't stand in the way of my identification with the movie. I obviously didn't grow up in the middle of a war and have no connection with Russian politics and history, but again, it makes no difference. Oddly enough, these two central ideas in the movie don't even seem to register when I look back on it.

So just what is the mirror about? The Time Out film guide sums it up quite well saying: "Tarkovsky goes for the great white whale of politicized art – no less than a history of his country in this century seen in terms of the personal – and succeeds." That is a rather broad description and not a particularly exciting one. Of course if that were all that the movie was about, I would not be writing this review.

When it comes down to it, The Mirror is an elusive film to classify. I've seen it over and over and still have a hard time getting a firm grip on its structure. Powerful images with their own internal logic flit by, skittering at the edges of our consciousness like the memories of a lost day from our childhood. Complex narratives follow children and adults, past and present. Powerful documentary footage is interspersed along with slow motion dream sequences. The closest description I can come up with is that The Mirror is a collection of images, all related and all central to the human experience.

The Mirror is Tarkovsky's finest film, and for certain kindred souls it truly will be a mirror. A mirror to every memory long thought lost, it will show each person who looks a different reflection.