The Homesman

THE HOMESMAN                 B-                   

USA  France  (122 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Tommie Lee Jones       Official Facebook

A film weighed down by the seriousness of its own efforts, an old-fashioned western that dramatizes the emptiness of the frontier landscape and the seeming impossibility of surviving under the brutally harsh conditions of the American West, especially for women.  While the feminist bent is well-intentioned, and the cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto is ravishing throughout, the film is simply too downbeat for its own good, always carrying an extra load of unnecessary baggage inherited from the demands of such an inhospitable storyline.  Never allowing the audience in, the film instead forces the viewer into miserably unhappy territory and then leaves them there with no way out, a Sartrian existential No Exit debacle, becoming one of the gloomier and most depressing films seen this year, literally a portrait of hell on earth.  Leading us through this psychological world of endless suffering is Hillary Swank as Mary Bee Cuddy, a frontierswoman living alone on the prairie, beholden to no one, seemingly a free spirit, yet she carries the burden of moral righteousness around her shoulders like an insufferable weight, a Florence Nightingale of social reform, a predecessor to the Women's Christian Temperance Union, yet she is stuck in the Nebraska Territory of the 1820’s and 30’s, an era rarely depicted in motion pictures as there’s nothing exotic or romanticized about the bleakness of the times, where every day is living and dying through the dreariness of a great depression.  Because of her unattached social status as the town spinster, Mary Bee is handed (by the church) the thankless task of transporting three crazy women on a long and arduous journey across the desolate Territory back to the civilization of Iowa where they can be handed over to a Methodist Church that is willing to care for them. 

These women have all been driven into insanity by the harshness of the times and the callous indifference of their husbands, a reference right out of John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS (1956), removing the racist angle of being abducted white women raised by Indians and therefore rejected by the moral sanctity of white civilization.  Here 19-year old Arabella Sours (Grace Gummer, daughter of Meryl Streep) has lost three children to diphtheria, fiercely clutching to a rag doll (also in Ford) in a near catatonic state, while Theoline Belknap (Miranda Otto) threw her newborn into the outhouse after the family farm failed, and Gro Svendsen (Sonja Richter) suffers from delusions of evil, who is so violent to herself or others that she needs to continuously be tied up.  The idea of Mary Bee, a straight-laced, strong, and indomitable woman transporting these women alone across such a barren wasteland is equally crazy in the eyes of the wary townsfolk, as few believe she will succeed, including her town minister (John Lithgow) who instead offers his prayers.  As she rounds up her cargo one by one, placing them inside a locked wooden box with iron guarded windows, like a mobile prison on wheels, she happens upon a miserable wretch in an even more precarious position than her own, a man tied to a tree with a noose around his neck while sitting, hands tied behind him, on a horse, whose slightest movement suggests his unfortunate end is near.  He is none other than George Briggs (Tommie Lee Jones), a morally dubious, contemptible lowlife drifter who happens to be a claim jumper, stealing another man’s property while he’s gone back East “to find himself a wife.”  Taking advantage of his desperate position, namely having no other options, she makes him promise to help her throughout her long and difficult journey.  While he’s something of an ornery cuss who doesn’t like what he bargained for, in this mythic American West, a man doesn’t go back on his word. 

If this film does anything, it provides a visual depiction of flatness as an unforgiving plain that stretches to an endless horizon, offering little in the way of hope or vegetation, where the idea of surviving out in this arid wilderness seems remote.  Unlike Kelly Reichardt’s Meek's Cutoff (2010), the film is not about the minutia of daily survival, or a claustrophobic world closing in, but more closely resembles Jones’s earlier effort THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA (2005), shot on the director’s own property, another film about transporting human cargo across uncivilized territory, where the beauty of the film is the journey, set against desert landscapes with only traces of water, where sheer fortitude is the only thing that gets them through.  Unfortunately, this film has a weary feeling of aimlessness about it, missing the taut direction of his earlier effort.  While there are dangerous encounters along the way, not to mention the lingering possibility of starvation or Indian attack, Briggs offers some degree of frontier wisdom along with his eccentric behavior, obstinate and stubborn in his steadfast refusal to do any more than absolutely necessary, forcing Mary Bee to carry the load, where tending to the deteriorating minds of the three women is a loathsome proposition, a burden she’s forced to endure alone.  While she’s a model of consistency and moral piety, Mary Bee begins to suffer from outright loneliness, where the human condition surrounding her is a sorry state, offering no respite from the enveloping purgatory that is her plight.  As fate would have it, she is crushed under the weight of her own good intentions, a mythological Icarus flying too close to the sun. 

While Briggs has every intention to abandon those women, offering their cruel fates to the winds, he has a change of conscience, feeling obligated to live up to Mary Bee’s sheer persistence, if only through stubborn resolve.  While it’s possible they all perished out in the wilderness, as out of death comes the surreal, where the rest of the journey has the feel of a dream, where much like an apparition or a mirage, Briggs happens upon a newly constructed, freshly painted hotel out in the middle of nowhere, but they refuse food or lodging to such depraved souls as they are preparing for an evening banquet for wealthy entrepreneurs who will develop a civilized town where emptiness currently sits.  This kind of indifference of the wealthy is not a stranger to the impoverished, but after witnessing this harrowing ordeal, it’s beneath contempt.  Nonetheless, life goes on, and Briggs survives only in the manner that he’s accustomed to, namely violating all known ethical conduct, eventually crossing the Missouri River into what resembles the land of Oz — Iowa, which may as well be heaven, a perfectly manicured and pristine community where everything is neatly in place, handing over his tainted ladies (along with letters of family contacts) to the wife of the Methodist minister, none other than Meryl Streep, whose astonishment at their arrival melts into open generosity, where in this depiction, human kindness is a surreal sign of a civilized future, leaving Briggs an outcast, like Ethan Edwards in THE SEARCHERS, and like Custer’s last stand at the Battle of the Little Bighorn where the Indians cut his eyes out, unable to see the spirit world, left to blindly wander lost in an inhospitable neverland for eternity.

The Road

THE ROAD                    B                  

USA  (112 mi)  2009  ‘Scope  d:  John Hillcoat  

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

—The Beatitudes, Matthew 5: 3 – 10

Well, now we know the end of the world looks like Mount St. Helens, the side of the mountain that blew off with the last volcanic eruption, leaving behind devastation and ruin in its wake, namely gray rivers of dead trees and ash caught in an avalanche of mud.  Life as we knew it is all but gone, only traces left in the few people that roam the countryside.  Haunting, yet quietly affecting, this is as grim as movies can get showing a frightening post apocalyptic vision of the planet in which the living envy the dead, honed down to the barest essentials of what’s left of humanity as thugs with guns roam the countryside constantly searching for food, resorting to cannibalism, keeping helpless victims alive through enslavement, eating them piece by piece.  But this is no zombie movie, this is real life, or what’s left of it, carefully guarded by the keepers of the flame who are “carrying the fire,” a father and son duo who identify themselves as the good guys, both of whom would rather starve to death than resort to ravaging fellow humans.  With quiet reverential piano music by Nick Cave, this feels like a memorial tribute to the fallen victims who have been left behind, all lost due to inexplicable circumstances, still left in the fragmented memories of those who can remember while they’re wandering the earth trying to stay alive.  Viggo Mortensen is the Man with binoculars who scouts out every building before they investigate, always searching inside for something useful, followed by his young 10-year old son, Kodi Smit-McPhee, who becomes an angelic presence by his side.  The spare narration by Mortensen has an almost sacred feel to it, describing a world through memories that are gone, haunted by feelings that are no longer useful in this world, where life has become a harsh and brutal game of survival with few, if any, real choices left, only life or death.  The love that exists between the father and son has a Biblical aura to it, where the presence of God guides their path, but like Jesus in human form, they are tormented by the hideous world all around them. 

This is likely a film experience that would benefit from reading the Cormac McCarthy novel ahead of time, as the rich textures underneath the eerie landscape would certainly elevate this work to poetic heights that the film fails to reach, spending the entirety of the movie in the grim details of eternal struggle, caught up in the disease and horror of the age, where the father in describing a corpse lying under the sheets in a bedroom tells his son that “it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”  The two are on a road to nowhere, described in the book as “tattered gods slouching in their rags across the waste.”  There’s nothing stagy here, no signature moments, instead there’s a long, slow push leading them both towards the inevitable end of the road, a point of no return, a finality that registers internally with all the raw anguish of a fallen soldier lost in the brush, soon to be replaced by another, and then another, until there are no more left to fight as sickness and death are all around them, with no hope or salvation for their efforts.  Shot in Oregon, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania, this has a rugged, almost cursed look to it, where in an odd moment surrounded by nothing but the dead they actually discover another living creature, an insect that quickly flies away, taking them both by surprise, almost like a miracle.  Every single shot bears a similarity to the working class despair and anguish expressed by Béla Tarr, where man’s unheeded, reckless actions lead him inevitably to a state of hopelessness, where the mystical images of Tarkovsky intrude, where an empty well and the vast and endless ocean seem to coincide, all connected by neverending torrents of rain. 

It’s interesting how the balance of power between the father and son changes as the film goes on, as we get darker into this labyrinth of Hell on earth, where the father has unquestioned authority, but the son’s sense of decency and human kindness is emotionally gripping, as there’s nothing else like that in the entire picture, like light shining in an otherwise darkened corner.  The importance of the son is beautifully recognized only at the end, where even the father seems to understand that he’s taught him all that he can, that the roles have reversed, and the son suddenly has a strange and powerful impact on his father’s actions, suggesting people can change even under the direst of circumstances and at any stage in their lives, and that instead of the strongest and most vile, it is the weakest among us who shall inherit the earth.  All of this really does have a Biblical context set in the bleakest of human conditions, where man’s travails are tested like never before.  It’s pretty clear that as darkness falls across the land where there’s a war outside raging, it’s the interior battles that will determine the ultimate outcome.  Who or what could be more saintly than the thoughts of a child whose innocence seen in this light is utterly captivating.  It’s very much like the final scene in the mystical realms of Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) where the father witnesses a miracle performed by his own child.  A minimalist exercise on man’s fate, a great portion of which is spent considering the option of suicide or facing the dread of impending doom, but it does finally lead us into transcendent territory where the depths of emotion are matched by the simplicity of its depiction.  If ever there was a film about faith, this is it.   

12 Years a Slave

12 YEARS A SLAVE              B-                   

Great Britain  USA  (134 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  Steve McQueen          Official site

I can speak of Slavery only so far as it came under my own observation—only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person.  My object is, to give a candid and truthful statement of facts: to repeat the story of my life, without exaggeration, leaving it for others to determine, whether even the pages of fiction present a picture of more cruel wrong or a severer bondage.

—Solomon Northrup, 12 Years a Slave, 1853

The world has still not come to terms with the slavery issue, as it continues in various forms, such as the trafficking of underage sex slave rings in a criminally underground Asian black market.  But the historical implications of the African slave trade from the 16th through to the 19th centuries remains thoroughly grounded in emotional hysteria as far as American movies are concerned, as the only way these stories are told, if at all, is to melodramatically elevate the misery so it’s nearly unwatchable, then afterwards overpraise the film as a way of overcompensating for the nation’s surprising disinterest in the subject.  Since the Civil Rights era, little has changed to alter the sheer ignorance this nation suffers on racial matters, where despite being a racially diverse country overall, the large majority of the country never lives with or mingles with persons from other races, where in some states you can live there literally for years without ever seeing a person of color.  So while laws have been passed and school textbooks updated, they remain largely ignored, as they matter little in the everyday ordinary lives of most people, as they continue to live separately and lead segregated lives.  Races are brought together in the military, civil service jobs, or in racially mixed schools, but even then they tend to separate by race.  What does this tell us?  Only that we continue to ignore this issue overall, and with our first black President, it has a way of rearing its ugly head so that even good intentions are misread and given hateful implications, continually believing that no good can ever come out of racial harmony.

You’d think Nelson Mandela’s inspirational rise from serving a 27-year prison sentence during the Apartheid era in South Africa to becoming the nation’s first black President at the age of 76, showing no malice towards those who imprisoned him all those years, would be inspiration enough for the world to take note and rethink its views on race.  But that would make too much sense, while racism is an insidious disease that spreads throughout society out of sheer ignorance, where often even the educated haven’t a clue.  While this film is receiving plenty of accolades, it unfortunately doesn’t deserve them, as the film does next to nothing to elevate the discussion, and instead turns racial injustice into a depiction of psychopathic hysteria, as if only crazy people owned slaves, driven by psychotic sadistic delusions about superiority and property ownership, where the movie mindset is continually stuck in this stereotypical realm of inflicting as much misery on the audience, as if this represents dramatic or historical truth.  When it comes to slavery, subtlety is never a possibility, as instead the audience is hammered over the head with neverending images of cruelty and torture, really not much different than standard Hollywood action thrillers, but then the film is prefaced by the favored phrase, “based on a true story,” which suggests it’s all in the name of truth, which hides the fact it’s more likely about the almighty dollar, where truth and melodrama are often confused as one and the same. 

Steve McQueen is no slouch as a black British director, winner of a Turner Prize and the maker of the exquisite film HUNGER (2008) about the 1981 Irish hunger strike when one by one Irish prisoners were allowed to die in prison for a political cause in order for the British to absurdly prove a non-existent point that they were not political prisoners, prompting international media attention when 10 prisoners starved themselves to death, including their leader Bobby Sands who was elected as a Member of Parliament while in prison, a thoroughly complex film that at its center becomes a twenty-minute uninterrupted dramatic scene between Sands and a Catholic priest arguing the moral principles.  Why that film is hauntingly dramatic and this film is emotionally stagnant most likely lies in the way the subjects are portrayed, as one has a life or death urgency, while the other uses familiar movie stereotypes to accentuate the punishment.  In HUNGER, through a build-up of meticulous detail, it’s about a clarity of vision elevating the material, while in 12 YEARS A SLAVE, it’s about the misery inflicted, even more grisly than it was portrayed in ROOTS (1976), a made-for-TV miniseries that was made 35 years ago, becoming yet another example of the latest trend for the movies to utilize torture porn.  The problem with McQueen’s film is that it offers us nothing new, with slavery defining blacks as inferior and sub-human, telling us what we already know using the same stereotypical images of plantation slavery, where the grueling experience is exaggerated to epic proportions by the sheer cruelty of the slaveowners.  

While this film is based on free blacks being kidnapped into slavery, only this one example is cited, lending no historical perspective whatsoever, as there’s no mention of other American citizens facing similar abductions, so the audience hasn’t a clue how often this happened.  It appears to be a rare instance, and especially fortunate that Solomon just happened to be assigned to work with a liberal thinking white man (Brad Pitt), the only instance of slaves assigned to work side-by-side with whites in the entire picture.  Even the actions of the local sheriff in offering such little resistance and obeying a “Yankee law” seems far-fetched, as even one-hundred years later Southern governors were notoriously defying government imposed laws that differentiated with their highly prized concept of race and state’s rights.  Better films on slavery would be Jonathan Demme’s adaptation of the Toni Morrison novel in the film BELOVED (1998) which uses the supernatural as a near religious, transcendent experience in order to comprehend the depths of grief and trauma involved, while Pierre Yves-Borgeaud’s RETURN TO GORÉE (2007) follows Senegalese singer/songwriter Youssou N'Dour on a jazz pilgrimage, recognizing the music of jazz is a byproduct of slavery, tracing the origins to the original slave routes in Africa where many of the same complicated rhythms can still be heard by musicians on the streets, as music is again used as a transcendent experience, where the chilling horrors of slavery are poetically rendered while offering a remarkable gesture of grace and human reconciliation.  

Chiwetel Ejiofor is excellent as Solomon Northrup, a free black man living in the north in 1841 who was kidnapped and smuggled into slavery in the deep South, based on a book that’s a hundred and sixty years old, originally published in 1853, turning into a Pinocchio story where his role in the movie is basically to witness and/or endure every last bit of human depravity associated with slavery, which has a way of deadening one’s humanity in order to preserve the plantation way of life for white slaveowners.  Interestingly both male and female slaveowners inflict with equal measure the same horrifically brutal punishments, at times hanged or beaten to death, where slaves are relentlessly attacked under one hideously sadistic assault after another, supposedly proving a point about power and superiority.  While the dehumanization depicted in Pinocchio becomes a moral tale on discovering one’s true humanity, not so here, as slavery remains mired in barbaric treatment, where the picture assumes viewers need to relive this experience for themselves and suffer the same indignities and savagery that is connected to slavery.  The problem is the director never elevates the material above the hellish conditions, keeping the viewer imprisoned in the most demoralizing mindset possible, so the entire film is a portrait of that hell.  Like a plethora of Holocaust films that all tap into the same feeling of wretched misery, this is another venture into unending and unimaginable horrors, though it is beautifully photographed and artfully presented, not that this framing technique in any way enhances or detracts from the experience, as it remains pure and utter miserablism, an artform unto itself. 

Only God Forgives

ONLY GOD FORGIVES                    C+                  

Denmark  France  Thailand  USA  Sweden  (90 mi)  2013  d:  Nicolas Winding Refn    Official site [France]

An overly somber style over substance film, where except for the excessively violent subject matter, one might think this is a Wong Kar-wai film, as the lush visuals combined with the highly eclectic musical soundtrack written by Cliff Martinez add a hypnotic, near surreal color palette.  Stylishly impressive, set in the dreamy underworld of Bangkok, Thailand, but the characters all feel like they’re sleepwalking through their roles, not unlike Gaspar Noé’s ENTER THE VOID (2009), a director singled out in the credits by Refn, stuck in a netherworld purgatory waiting to be judged by a martial arts policeman named Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), dressed out of uniform in loosely fitting and comfortable clothing, who like a spaghetti western Avenging Angel or God, restores order through brutal punishments, bordering on torture porn, but his judgment comes swift and decisive instead of inflicting prolonged agony.  Afterwards, in perhaps the most surreal moments in the film, Chang sings karaoke while his fellow cops sit around in uniform to listen.  While the surface effects can be near spectacular, as the composition of each shot couldn’t be more remarkable, along with an edgy use of lighting and a dazzling color scheme, shot by cinematographer Larry Smith who worked on three Kubrick films, recreating the spooky element of surprise in the long hallways shots of the Overlook Hotel, but there’s little to no interior involvement, where the viewer is never connected emotionally to anything onscreen.  The dialogue is so campy during some of the most violent showdowns that it borders on the ridiculous, adding an element of the absurd to the already over-the-top visualizations, making this a midnight run cult film at the time of its initial release.  Refn also dedicates this film to Alejandro Jodorowsky, a cult figure whose films depict picturesque horrors and humiliations, where Peter Schjedahl in his New York Times review calls EL TOPO (1970) “a violent surreal fantasy, a work of fabulous but probably deranged imagination.”  Jodorowski himself is quoted as saying, “Everyday life is surrealistic, made of miracles, weird and inexplicable events.  There is no borderline between reality and magic.”  All of which means this was meant to be a head-scratcher, something of a mindfuck of a movie, where the Argento-like atmosphere of menacing doom defines the film.

Ryan Gosling is Julian, who along with his brother Billy (Tom Burke), run a Thai kickboxing club, which we learn later is just a front for a major drug operation.  Julian’s demeanor is so calm and understated that he barely utters more than a sentence or two throughout the entire film, where he doesn’t act so much as sulk, but like Chang, he’s more of a presence than an actual character.  When his brother inexplicably goes berserk, raping and killing an underage prostitute, leaving her lying in a pool of her own blood, the sickening aspect is so acute that the regular cops turn to Chang, something of a specialized expert only called upon in the most hideous crimes, where his unique method renders immediate judgment, with no arrest, no trial, and no imprisonment, as if he’s not really a part of the human condition, but an elevated force to contend with, seemingly drawing upon supernatural powers.  Except for his lightning quick martial arts strikes, he does everything else in a Zen-like calm, in near slow motion, as if he’s hovering over the consciousness of these criminal suspects with their fates in his hands, outraged at hearing their pathetic, self-justifying defenses, demanding that they admit to their crimes, enacting a savagely vicious arm mutilation when they don’t answer swiftly enough.  In this way, the act of justice is decisively rendered and remains permanent, not some idealized concept.  When Chang allows the girl’s father to take his revenge upon Billy, it’s as if the world turns upside down.  Kristin Scott-Thomas arrives on the scene in an outrageously over-the-top performance as the diabolical mother mourning the death of her firstborn, still fuming and in a state of rage that Julian hasn’t exacted revenge for his brother’s murder, re-establishing her iron-like control over the drug operations, and ordering Julian around as if he was still an insolent child.  The scene of the film is a formal dinner sequence between mother and son, where Julian is joined by Mai (Rhatha Phongam), a prostitute pretending to be his steady girlfriend, where the vile flamboyance of the mother turns this into a classic scene and one of the memorable highlights of the year, a uniquely horrific and thoroughly embarrassing moment where Scott Thomas becomes a dragon lady that turns belittling and malicious humiliation of her son and his hooker girlfriend into an artform, initiating an assault of crude language so debasing that she’s a contender for the most evil mother in screen history, something of a parallel to the Albert Brooks character in Refn’s previous film Drive (2011). 

Thematically, a film this very much resembles is Taxi Driver (1976), another avenging angel film where Chang has to literally clean up the scum and garbage on the streets, holding the same contempt for moral rot and decay as Travis Bickle, using many of the same unorthodox methods as well, creating an eternal bloodbath as human salvation.   But Scorsese’s film is deeply rooted in an incendiary, character driven performance, something altogether missing here, as outside of the commanding performance of Scott Thomas, the rest may as well be zombies or the walking dead.  With each successive shot so perfectly rendered, Refn uses the photograph-like composition to advance each scene, where except for the violent action sequences, much of this film is a picture of stillness, an induced calm, like an oasis on the horizon, but something of an illusion covering up the internal turmoil hidden within.  The sins of the world are covered in a kind of toxic moral laziness, while Chang’s job is to root out each rotting soul one by one.  Scott Thomas blames Chang for allowing her son to be murdered, completely overlooking Billy’s own wretched acts, and sets into motion a series of blistering assaults on the police designed to remove Chang from the picture, but it’s as if he’s from a different realm, inscrutable and untouchable, surviving every attempt, until ultimately Chang finds Julian.  In exaggerated spaghetti western fashion, the two head for the ultimate showdown playing out in Julian’s own boxing ring, now nearly deserted except for a few miscellaneous cops, Mai, and  Julian’s mother.  In the emptiness of the room, Julian proves no match, as his opponent is a phantom, a demented godlike figure with a bloodthirsty appetite for inflicting pain, literally pulverizing his victims before walking away unscathed, leaving behind a grim and overly solemn world that resembles a morgue.  The film lacks the energy and entertaining appeal of any Bruce Lee movie, but overwhelms with its superb production design, ultimately feeling like an empty experience that is all surface visuals with little more to offer.  Lacking the well-crafted characterization of Sergio Leone, this feels more like a cartoonish homage to the macho revenge genre, where the Tarantino-ish, overly stylish bloodletting continues, but it all feels so meaningless after awhile, becoming a one note film that only grows more tiresome.

Simon of the Desert (Simón del Desierto)

SIMON OF THE DESERT (Simón del Desierto)         A                    

Mexico  (45 mi)  1965  d:  Luis Buñuel

Simon of the desert, who is the most free man on Earth because he has and does what he wants, without any obstacles. He is there on top of a column, eating lettuce. Total freedom.

—Luis Buñuel, 1965

I am still, thank God, an atheist.       —Luis Buñuel, in a 1960 L'Express interview

What am I to God? Nothing, a murky shadow. My passage on this earth is too rapid to leave any traces; it counts for nothing in space or in time. God really doesn’'t pay any attention to us, so even if he exists, it’s as if he didn’t.                    

—My Last Sigh, Luis Buñuel’s autobiography, 1983

Besides being a spiritual exercise, blessing is good fun, too.     —Simón (Claudio Brook)

Impossible not to like this film, pre-dating the savage satire of Monty Python, this one taking aim at the exalted ambitions of man, one of Buñuel’s most scathingly hilarious films, which starts out deceptively serious before unleashing a bitingly absurd commentary about the pretentious behavior of the church.  The inspiration for the film came from a 13th century book recommended to Buñuel by the poet Federico García Lorca, containing the story of St. Simon Stylites, as ascetic who reportedly stood on a column in the middle of the desert for 37 years during the 5th century.  Similarly set during the early era of Christian ascetics, Simón (Claudio Brook) is the picture of saintly piety, spending years of his life standing atop a small tower in the desert, denying himself all earthly pleasures, where he is already regarded as a saint, which unfortunately has gone to his head, as the ever serious Simón believes he is closer to God than other mere mortals.  There is beautiful camera work by Gabriel Figueroa whose high angle views of the lofty tower in an empty desert perfectly embrace the lofty pretensions of man to elevate their souls, with wonderful dialogue written by Buñuel and Julio Alejandro, who together also co-wrote NAZARÍN (1959) and VIRIDIANA (1961).  The last of Buñuel’s highly regarded Mexican films, Simón is seen as a heavily bearded Holy Fool, talking superficial gibberish to himself much of the time while believing his conscious is in an eternal struggle with God’s will, continually asking if heaven is ready to accept him yet, where the church makes daily visits to his tower, bringing him lettuce and water, but also praying with him while making snide comments behind his back, jealous that Simón receives greater notoriety than the learned bishops or priests. 

While Simón makes blessings and religious pronouncements, as if he’s become God’s spokesperson, he also criticizes others for not being pious enough, chastising a young monk for being too young, as he can’t even grow a beard yet, and then contemptuously pushes his own mother aside at one point when he comes down from the tower after he's been on the same platform for 6 years, 6 months, and 6 days (a Revelations reference to the devil) for a brand new tower just a few yards away that’s even higher, supposedly closer to heaven, specially built for him by a local businessman who he miraculously cured of illness.  This gesture appears particularly crude when we see that his mother has been keeping a silent vigil at his side for many years, living a solitary existence in a hut nearby where she can stand watch over her son.  Simón even performs a miracle, as a thief whose hands have been cut off by the local priests asks for a new pair of hands, which suddenly appear, whereupon he leaves to go home, hardly even amazed, without an ounce of gratitude, having received what he wanted, and then strikes his kids on the head with his new hands when they curiously ask if they are the same hands as before.  But there are those who question his sincerity, accusing him of being a charlatan, who are then struck mad on the spot, as if by divine order. 

At one point a visiting monk says to the protagonist “Your asceticism is sublime.”  But the real thrill is the presence of Sylvia Pinal as the devil temptress who attempts to lure Simón down from his tower.  She takes on various disguises, from a young girl in a sailor suit who bares her breasts and shows off her stockings, who magically appears on the tower next to Simón whispering in his ear, calling him weak and timid, poking fun at his slave-like devotion and his ridiculous display of pretense, a hypocrite who hasn’t an ounce of mercy, before turning into a Christ-like shepherd with a beard who at first fools Simón before tempting him to choose a life of sensual pleasure, so he immediately decides in absurd penance that he will stand on only one leg.  She immediately kicks a lamb and asks, “What kind of crap is this?”  The running dialogue between the two is priceless, as Simón asks Satan to repent her wicked ways.  Satan, wondering what would happen if she did, asks whether God would accept her back into Heaven?  Of course the answer is no, as she’s been condemned to Hell.  Satan indicates it’s only a matter of time before Simón will join her. 

No one despised the Catholic Church as much as Luis Buñuel, where SIMON OF THE DESERT and VIRIDIANA (1962) comprise two of the more devastating attacks not only on the church, but the moral hypocrisy of their role, where much like Dostoyevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov, the church no longer needs a living Christ as they have appropriated the religious message from God and replaced it with an infallible theocratic doctrine that only they control, forcing parishioners to submit to their authoritarian rules and dictates while amassing great power and wealth.  Too often the church overlooks the moral sins of its own corruption and the criminal activity of sexually impure priests in the interest of the church, which supposedly stands above all and governs by autocratic rule.  Buñuel’s films mock the churches power and the sheepish conformity of organized religion by asking the filmgoing audience to think for themselves and exercise their own free will, using Simón as Christ’s misguided and self-important religious fanatic, placing himself above man where he undermines his own special purpose.  Even the miracles performed by Simón are taken for granted, having little to do with God or religious faith, and instead are so routinely expected that followers would be disappointed if they didn’t witness one, eventually losing interest in Simón altogether when they don’t, becoming passé, where his message is soon forgotten. 

And in a wonderful image of an airplane flying overhead, Simón is whisked ahead into the future surrounded by tall skyscrapers where he and Satan sit at a swinging 1960’s New York City discotheque where writhing kids are dancing non-stop to the grinding electric rock sounds of a group called Los Sinners in an expression of sheer joy and sensuality playing a primitive piece of music called “Radioactive Flesh” Los Sinners - Rebelde Radioactivo YouTube (3:49).  Simón, now with short cropped hair, is smoking a pipe, looking very professorial, playing the part of an aging intellectual, serious and forlorn, while Satan in a miniskirt, smoking like a chimney, urges the dancers to keep up their frenetic rhythm as they frolic the night away.  Instead of ascending to heaven like he hoped and prayed for all those years placing himself on his own self-inflated pedestal, he’s instead whisked into a purgatory of Hell dancing with the Devil, a near perfect masterpiece that is rollicking fun.  Part of a religious trilogy with NAZARÍN (1959) and THE MILKY WAY (1969), the production ran out of money, cutting short what was intended to be a feature length film, but in its brevity becomes a more perfectly concise work with a singularly unique vision and plenty of Buñuel wit.  

L'Argent

Director Robert Bresson

L’ARGENT                 A-                  

aka:  Money

France  Switzerland  (85 mi)  1983  d:  Robert Bresson

The corruption of an innocent soul is a familiar theme in Bresson’s works, adapting a Tolstoy short story The Counterfeit Bill, where oddly each are the last works of the two great masters.  But unlike previous works, where the soul is eventually cleansed and finds redemption, not so here, as the misguided protagonist instead becomes consumed by society’s picture of him as damaged goods, tainting him with a Macbethian stain of impurity and corruption that doesn’t wipe off, where his life takes a downward descent into what can only be called Hell.  There was little evidence of God in Bresson’s last picture, but there is none here.  At 82, the French director has created one of his most radical works, where this is another uncompromising glimpse into the human soul, branded with a kind of scorn and bitterness non-existent in other Bresson works.  The finale of this film is simply unfamiliar territory, handled with some of the most exacting filmmaking in Bresson’s career, where the framing and lighting and precise compositional camerawork couldn’t be more sublime, yet the bleak subject matter is shattering.  It’s quite a leap from the banal simplicity of the film’s first hour to the profound devastation of the finale, where the culmination of raw power by the end is unprecedented with this director.  This is hardly the kind of film one enjoys to watch, but this is certainly the kind of storytelling and cinematic art one can’t help but appreciate.      

The story concerns the passing of counterfeit notes, how the passing from one to another only enlarges the scope of the crime, especially when the passing is not accidental but intentional, where individuals may feign innocence to protect themselves, unaware of the damage they cause to others.  Yvon (Christian Patey) is that unlucky someone who just happens to have been stuck with the notes, completely unaware that the money is counterfeit, who picks up a payment during the regular rounds of his delivery, accompanied by a receipt.  When the police pick him up with false money, he returns to the store that handed it to him and they deny any knowledge, even pay off one of their clerks to lie in court to protect the store’s reputation.  Despite a show of leniency by the court, Yvon loses his job anyway, which starts his circuitous path into a life of crime, eventually ending up in jail for a bungled robbery, where he eventually meets one of the clerks from the store that passed him the notes in the first place, who still believes his crime was one without victims.  Yvon’s imprisonment is proof otherwise, where it’s clear all who passed the money are in some way tainted by the crime.  By changing the title of the story, Bresson has also shifted the emphasis to money as a means of exchange, which includes all the nefarious acts associated with it, including lies, embezzlement, and theft, all of which have greater implications than the two individuals making the transaction.       

Once released from prison, the story takes on an onerous shift.  Discovering his wife is lost to him and his daughter dead with diphtheria, Yvon moves far away, staying in a countryside inn where he can’t seem to stop himself from taking advantage of the situation, as rural ways are more lax, and to him, more inviting, beckoning him to rob the place, which he does easily, but also leaves no trace behind, all of which happens offscreen.  What happens next is simply baffling, as the color pattern of the film alters sharply, where the rich hues of a forest colored green meet Yvon just after he passes next to an old woman (Sylvie Van den Elsen), as both quickly pass glances, where his mysterious behavior is just as shocking, as if he internally recognizes this change, suddenly confessing his crime to this woman, who doesn’t seem the least bit phased by it.  As he enters into this new realm, Bresson’s focus couldn’t be more mesmerizing, as his attention to detail is meticulous, using an oil lamp in an otherwise darkened space, adding richness to the color while the film composition by Pasqualino De Santis, who shot the two previous films by Bresson, is equally as masterful.  Because so much happens offscreen, and what remains onscreen is so gorgeously visualized, this has a surreal quality to it, given a very painterly look by Bresson, who was initially a painter, but the dark and dreamlike tone adds so much complexity to the constantly changing atmosphere, as it sneaks up on the viewer and comes out of nowhere.  The finale is simply stunning.  By the end, of course, we are all implicated in this human drama, where absent the guiding hand of God, man has plunged off the edge and fallen into the abyss.