Only This Much Shadow Left: The Day I Became A Woman (2000)

I am going on the record as saying that were I afforded an unlimited amount of time, brain power and ability to master an understanding of cultural mores and language that I would wholly spill my time into understanding all things related to Iranian cinema.  While it is not my primary focus or even one of my sub-research interests as I become more invested in my academic endeavors I am quite certain in my assertion that it has produced some of the best films in the past two decades, hovering almost entirely around the wonderful offerings of Abbas Kiarostami.  However, he is far from the only director working in the country and others have produced keenly meta-cinematic works that manage to consider the state of identity in Iran both on a literal and metaphorical level, all lending in some degree to the impossible, yet perfect, blending of the realist and allegorical tradition of this countries cinematic output.  I adore these works, A Moment of Innocence and Close-Up being two notable works, however, upon the discovery that there existed a film by an Iranian woman that had achieved equal status demanded its being sought out, or more accurately introduced to me by a professor, and the result was nothing short of an evocation on art and the nature of the self when it is in contrast to competing notions of what one should do in a society whose history is a maddening conflation of contradictions as well as rich and proud history.  The Day I Became a Woman is the poetic and magical work by Marzieh Meshkini and it is nothing short of pure cinematic perfection.  Told in a tripartite narrative, this film manages to cleverly navigate tenuous boundaries of temporal and spatial existence to show that perhaps not everything is as idyllic in a country whose global exoticization, paired with a particularly tense relationship with the "western" world has resulted in a cinematic experience so inherently unique that to place another layer of non-normative identity upon it causes it to take on an ethereal and outright moving quality.  If cinema truly has the ability to move beyond the real into another layer of understanding, The Day I Became a Woman is the backbone to such an aesthetic argument.

Clearly divided between three stories, The Day I Became a Woman begins with the experiences of Haveh (Fatemah Cherag Akhar) a girl on the island of Kish who has just turned nine years old, therefore making her subject to the wearing of traditional chador (Islamic headdress for Iran).  Confused by this demand, enforced by her grandmother and own mother, Haveh simply wants to spend the day playing with her friend Hassan (Hassan Nebah).  While she cannot put off her becoming woman she is able to bargain for an extra hour of play with Hassan that is limited by his having to complete homework, thus resulting in her having only time to share an exchange of a lollipop with Hassan before being placed in the chador and carted off by her mother.  The second story centers on Ahoo (Shabnam Toloui) a young woman who is shown competing in a bicycle race with other woman on the island and while she seems content with simply riding with the pack when a her husband approaches on horseback demanding that she give up racing and return home, the panicked Ahoo continues to ride forward never stopping or appearing to consider giving up.  Indeed, as her husband and other men from her tribe approach demanding that she stop, Ahoo drives forward blowing past all the other women in her race, however, when the tribe gets their leaders involved, including some of Ahoo's brothers, their blocking of the road prevent her from moving forward, becoming a thing in the background of another riders line of sight.  The third portion of the story focuses on Hoora, or Houra (Azizeh Sedighi) an elderly woman landing in Kish in hopes of doing some extensive duty free shopping.  Houra, complete with a series of strings on her fingers to remind her of the items she needs, begins accruing furniture and appliances at an alarming rate, her source of money is confusing to all involved.  Yet when she completes her list, save for one item on her finger which she cannot recollect, she is not quite ready to leave, therefore she sets up her wares on the beach in a sort of house without walls much to the elation of the boys she has hired as help and the confusion of two women who have approached on bicycle, purportedly having just finished the race involving Ahoo.  Regardless, Houra has the boys build her a raft that allows her to float her goods onto a ship in the distance skyline, all the while the newly chador donning Haveh looking on with an enigmatic look that suggests both despondence and curiosity.

Time, space and identity are all clear themes within Meshkini's stunning film.  However, to some degree, these are also central issues in pretty much every film, although uniquely so to Iranian cinema and its bizarre world of hyper-censorship.  I, however, am fascinated with the ways in which Meshkini uses movement to suggest something transitory, if not constantly liminal.  The figures in her film seem to be caught in an impossible space between the world of representation and the reality the viewers are living.  Take for example, the innocent, yet highly sexualized sharing of a lollipop between Haveh and Hassan.  The continuity in this shot is off, but it would appear to be a choice on the part of Meshkini, as the two are now split off from the world, the cutting of the scene never showing the two children (or new adults?) in the same frame, it would break censorship, yet through a stroke of delightful precociousness, the two share in an intimate encounter, overlaid by suckling sounds on the overdub soundtrack that moves between the diagetic and non-diagetic simultaneously.  The two move in impossible ways because to depict them in a normal encounter would be to face off against strict censorship.  Incidentally, even in its cut off manner, censors still suggested that Meshkini remove the scene altogether.  Ahoo's movement is perhaps most evocative, because the constant shots from the forefront of her biking towards the screen invoke the same sense of terror that occurred in Arrival at the Train Station or the Klans ride in Birth of a Nation.  However, what is impending and fear inducing, is instead a shared encounter between Ahoo fleeing an oppressive past and the viewers, assumedly the women encountering the film.  The intercuts of Ahoo's peddling feet and the clomping of horses chasing the rebellious Ahoo suggest a movement both transitionally, but also metaphorically as she becomes animalistic in her flight from illogical oppression, but more importantly, an unseen predator.  Finally, it is worth quickly noting Houra's own movement which is decidedly more aided by the mechanical, whether it be her landing in the space on a plane or the aid of her extended wheelchair/pushcart, Houra represents a figure whose movement is figuratively disembodied and requires the help of others.  Her female identity overlaid by this and a desire to consume all that she never had speaks to immobility of women in the space of cinema and culture in wild and transgressive ways.  Again it is worth noting that the film was made within censorship restrictions, but manages to knowingly contradict them at every opportunity.

Key Scene:  The lollipop scene is seriously one of the most complex of cinematic encounters I have ever witnessed and this is in a film full of visually transgressive commentary.

The DVD transfer is not great, but aside from a Korean region 3 DVD it is the only option and it looks phenomenal regardless.  As such buying a copy is a MUST.

Sin Can Be Caught As Easily As The Plague: The Devils (1971)

I had real trouble picking out a quote for this particular film, because as is the case with this and Altered States, ashamedly the only other film by Ken Russell I have viewed, every bit of dialogue is delivered with a sense of the literary grandiose, made all the more so by it narratively existing in 17th century france, a place rife with religious issues that extend outward to include intense problems in regards to repression of sexuality and a variety of diseases spreading through the country, Ken Russell who taps into such excesses and oppressions with surgeon-like precision excels with the material here.  I am aware that one could certainly read The Devils as being antithetical to all things horror, the theme of the blog this month, and to a certain degree I would tend to agree, however, I am also of the split opinion that The Devils is wholly a work of horror filmmaking, existing in the genre more so than many of the films I have viewed this month that have purported themselves to be fully genre, particularly the atrociously misguided and ill-conceived Hostel.  Russell, who makes it a method of his to question the limitations of human nature in both physical terms and sensorial, managing to extend this movement through spatial and temporal awareness to include the very means by which cinema records such non-linear trips.  A work like The Devils is horrific, in the same way the work of Kubrick, Hitchcock or Jodorowsky are intensely so, never backing down from imagery that is confrontational and though notably surreal, never inconsequential.  I will admit that I was not fully involved with this film, at least in the same sense as I was with Altered States, but that is primarily due to the somewhat lackluster prints of the film currently made available, whose graininess and general lack of cleanliness for a release print can be somewhat off-putting, especially considering that this film is decidedly cinematic, relying on detailed compositions wherein depth of field factor heavily into the interpretations of characters acts and emotions in real and quantifiable ways.  The Devils is a cinematic experiences in the same vein as Salo, becoming a point of reference for later exploitation films, most notably School of the Holy Beast, but in the hands of Russell it manages to extend to its own discordant cinematic world.

The Devils focuses on a religious town in 17th century France overseen by Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) a leader hoping to convince a flamboyant Louis XIII (Graham Armitage) to change the fortifications of France as a means to destroy a Protestant power move while also assuring his own advance in power.  Louis agrees to these demands but makes special provisions for the town of Loudon, for which he promised protection to its late governor.  The town is now overseen by the well-respected, albeit sexually voracious priest Urbain Grandieur (Oliver Reed) who is the object of affection for woman both in the community and behind the convent walls longing to consummate a relationship with the priest.  Grandieur, undoubtedly aware of his sway, moves through Loudon using his power as a priest to seek confession with various women, eventually settling on marrying a woman named Madeleine (Gemma Jones), much to the frustration of Grandieur's former lover Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) who mounts a religious uprising against Madeleine, wholly a result of her feelings as a scorned lover.  Meanwhile, indifferent to the demands on the part of Louis XIII to spare the city of Loudon, one of Richelieu's men arrives in the city of Loudon intent of overtaking its population.  In the wildness of all this, Grandieur's debauchery is brought to the attention of a higher ranking priest, who mounts an inquisition on the town of Loudon, specifically on the convent in which Sister Jeanne and others reside.  The head inquisitor Pierre Barre (Michael Gothard) arrives at the convent only to discover it in a state of absolute lunacy, complete with naked nuns, who are having sexual experiences atop a giant crucifix, while suggestively stroking sacramental candles.  In a false attempt at exorcism, Barre and the others reveal the false state of the possession, but also show the entire act of an exorcism to be equally performative leading to a divide within the groups resulting in the ability of the town to be overcome by Richelieu's men that much easier.  When Grandieur returns to the town, he is called up for heresy and put on trial, alleged to be in league with Satan and despite his refusal to confess to his sins, he is burned at the stake, leaving a lovelorn Madeleine to leave the space of the city, entering onto a literal long and winding road with only the company of skeletons hanging on pikes outside the city.

Russell, as a filmmaker, perhaps most closely associates with the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky, in so much as their films, while linear, are only so in very tangential cohesions. Take, for example, the relationship between the experiences of of Richelieu and Louis XIII in relation to Grandieur and the town of Loudon, to a degree they could exist outside of each other, both in a temporal and spatial sense, only really relating because the film denotes itself as a historically-based period piece.  Aside from this distinction, Russell takes as many liberties as he sees fit, moving between showing the most abject of experiences available from the time, whether it be the very real plagues facing the space of France in the 17th century, or the disturbingly oppressive ways in which gender was relegated within patriarchal constructs of the time.  Russell is not attempting to make a wholly disturbing and unwatchable critique of religious wars, but instead; clearly intends to play up the absurdity and frivolity of the entire occurrence, at times overlaying his film with zany music to give even a exorcism a layer of Felliniesque absurdity.  Perhaps the best element of Russell's approach to the period piece, is to accept that a blanket recreation would not drive home the theme of unchecked authority and gendered privilege, thus making a degree of his set and visuals indicative of something within a science-fiction framework, giving the high walls and evasive angles of buildings a certain feeling that Loudon is a microcosm of a large dystopia, decidedly true of this point in history.  At times the film feels as though it could be lifted right out of an Orwell novel, while in other instances one could imagine its visuals fitting nicely inside of Michel Foucault's discussions of panopticism.  Russell is a filmmaker aware of the craft of filmmaking as an inherently fallible craft, wherein other period pieces push and strive for authenticity, without accepting that their very existence rejects a truth of the past, Russell instead uses the space to directly comment upon how past events can draw parallels to current problems, whether it be the on-the-nose references to religious power and the Ku Klux Klan or a more clever suggestion that exoticization and desire thrust upon those in a space of religious piety are far from contemporary issues, everything is working in a constant state of dialogue. Russell, wants his film to be a historical reconsideration, after all most period pieces emerge at a time when their narratives are decidedly relational to contemporary issues, The Devils was such a case, although in a nearly prophetic manner it still proves equally pertinent almost fifty years later.

Key Scene:  The exorcism obviously, whether it be for its pulling from Dreyer or from Fellini, it still manages to be a decidedly unique vision from the world of Russell.

I would rent this film, not because it is bad, but because the print is not ideal.  Hopefully, it will be salvaged by BFI or Criterion into a cleaner print than what is currently made available.

In Order To Find, You Must First Learn To Hide: Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

There are two things I can say right off the bat when talking about this film.  Firstly, it is perhaps one of the best literary adaptations I have witnessed to date, although that should be no surprise considering it was in the ever caring hands of Francois Truffaut.  Secondly, I am pretty sure that Tommy Wiseau of The Room infamy took all his acting cues from Oskar Werner, particularly in the manner of uttering names.  Although, this adaptation of Ray Bradbury's canonical novel is sadly one of Truffaut's lesser works, it manages to exude so much of the style and substance we have come to know and love about the director, managing to make it one of my favorite of the director, second only to Shoot The Piano Player.  It captures all the greatness of a dystopian nightmare while still managing to be cinematic, understated and surprisingly fresh.  It is no small matter to make a film about a person who burns books and exists in a society that has, essentially, become inundated with mind-numbing television programs whose vague dialogue and open-endedness manage to blindly lead the "cousins" of some unnamed future city into believing that they are happy with meaningless dribble on a flat screen television, one of Bradbury's more eerie visions to prove true and other consumerist oriented items.  Friendship is a vague thing in this film and deservedly so, because Truffaut's reimagining of the work, emphasizes the separated nature of this paranoid world in which reading a book is a crime, on the grounds that to engage with written work is to invariably cause one to be sad.  Firefighters now cause fires as opposed to putting them out, although an argument could be made as to them putting out the fires of revolution through censorship.  This film somewhat serves as a counter to Godard's vision of what television would do to society, and as I have mentioned far earlier in this blog, Godard and Truffaut had a rather unfortunate falling out only years prior to this films release.  Truffaut sees a world where we can still escape conformity through the memories of wonderment, while Godard manages to see all going to hell via mass technologies, something he makes contentiously clear in Film Socialisme.  I am always in the favor of Truffaut's vision because it has a care and earnestness for human success and, honestly, who can stand to be as virulently depressed as Godard all the time.

For those of you not terribly familiar with the novel, let me first suggest reading the book before even continuing on with this description and if you have already had the pleasure of engaging with Bradbury's work the plot should be a nice refresher.  We are shown a firefighter named Montag (Oskar Werner) whose job as stated earlier is not to put out fires, but to burn books, donning a badge that reads 451, the temperature at which paper ignites.  He is, as the story begins, the ideal employee and up for promotion, something that makes his wife Linda (Julie Christie) quite happy, because it means that they will, amongst other things, be able to finally get another wall unit with which to watch more television shows.  Things seem aligned to work perfectly until Montag is approached by a woman named Clarisse  (Julie Christie) who confronts him about the reasons behind burning books and asks him if he had ever actually read one of the books he is so quick to destroy.  While Montag is initially quite dismissive of this suggestion, a growing concern for what makes these books so cherished causes him to crack into a copy of David Copperfield, an act that changes him forever, causing him to become filled with an insatiable desire to read, an act that leads to a distancing from Linda.  Montag, nonetheless, continues his job all the while secretly reading, until he witnesses a woman choose to die engulfed with her books rather instead of living in a world without them.  This realization that books do reflect something much larger than words on a page, Montag can no longer contain his desires and even while he is forced to watch his house burn down, he steals a book and flees to the outskirts of the city.  There he finds a commune of people who have dedicated their lives to memorizing a book, thus the words on the page possess a living identity, he reencounters Clarisse while memorizing The Collected Short Stories of Edgar Allen Poe.  The film closes with the members of the group walking back and forth reciting the books they have committed to memory.

I mentioned that it was a rather bold act to make a film version of a book that is essentially about a society becoming disconnected from the written word.  Of course, Bradbury's concern was more with television and even more so a society that censors all things that could make them reconsider their social place.  Yet, Truffaut manages to use the film as a provocation of what the novel already was and creates it is in such a jarring and intense manner that it does exactly what good literature should and what bad television fails to do, it incorporates thought provoking moments throughout and Truffaut a film scholar at heart uses his medium as much as a form of literature as any great author.  Furthermore, there are momentary tricks and brilliant cinematic doublings simply not possible in the book  The obvious one being the playing of both Linda and Clarisse by Julie Christie, which suggests that it is not infidelity that drives Montag away from Linda, but a desire to escape monotony and a fascist oppression.  Similarly, we are able to witness the actual act of book burning, which while describe quite magnificently by Bradbury in the text, helps with its literal incandescence on a screen.  Various other tricks throughout the film, whether they be edited zoom-in shots or the reversal shots allowing for Montag and other to slide up a fire pole ad layers of filmic metaphor and emphasis on the absurd world in which this dystopic state exists.  I would argue that this is not necessarily an alternative work to Bradbury's original, but almost a add-on to the ideas professed in the novel.  Truffaut clearly has a close attachment to this fascist idea of censorship and wants to attack it in his own artistic medium.

Key Scene:  While the book burning moments are intense, nothing is quite as well executed as Montag's first moments of reading David Copperfield.

This is how a literary adaptation should be made and it is now one of my favorite Truffaut works, perhaps in need of a push out of obscurity.  Cinematically and metaphorically it serves as everything one should desire from film.  Getting a copy, all be it a bit pricey, is a must.