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Two types of "Bastards," animated awesomeness and some lost Shimizu fill out the year's highlights you could only watch at home.
7. “Private Century”
(Jan Šikl, Czech Republic, 2006)
“Private Century” is an eight-hour Czech miniseries comprised entirely of home movie footage, following the passages of eight well-filmed middle-class families through the bulk of the 20th century, from the ’20s to deep into the Communist era. What certain families choose to film, how they behave when the cameras are on (clothed and otherwise), how they are said to have behaved when the camera was off — it’s a Balzacian trove of human life-stuff, mixed up with the amoral, cyclopean gaze of cinema. [Facets]
6. “The Sky Crawlers”
(Mamoru Oshii, Japan, 2008)
Mr. “Ghost in the Shell” goes retro-futurist, plunging into a nostalgic dystopia of perpetual war (with breathtaking “aerial” combat footage), inhabited by soulless android fighter pilots. About as enigmatic and creepy-powerful as anime gets. [Sony Pictures Home Entertainment]
5. “I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar”
(Philippe Garrel, France, 1991)
Garrel, in his ’60s, is by now semi-famous for being semi-obscure, even in France, though he remains one of the last stragglers to have fallen under the New Wave umbrella. His approach is as observational and claustrophobic as his life has been tumultuous (a decade spent doing heroin with Nico on Ibiza); it’s his life that’s on screen, for better or worse. Garrel returns to those Nico years, with Dutch actress Johanna ter Steege playing the bipolar Nordic junkie, with whom life crashes and burns, and who haunts the Garrel avatar even after a stable married life (with then-wife Brigitte Sy, essentially playing herself) is established. Rarely has a filmmaker taken his own maturation and middle-aged growth as his career subject, in film after film, without distraction or compromise. [Zeitgeist Films; read the original review here.]
4. “Japanese Girls at the Harbor”
(Hiroshi Shimizu, Japan, 1933)
An almost exact contemporary of Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse from the beginnings of their four careers in the mid-to-late ’20s to their last films, Shimizu was a far busier industry craftsman (over 160 films at the latest estimation), but almost entirely forgotten (you won’t find him in any English-language film history). He should be required viewing — even this silent drama, which has a disarming way of “listening” to dialogue from great distances, and dissolving characters out of scenes as they were ghosts. [Criterion Collection - Eclipse Series 15; read the original review here.]
3. “Emergency Kisses”
(Philippe Garrel, France, 1989)
Sorry. In “Emergency Kisses,” Garrel stars, in effect, as himself — a self-absorbed, philandering mega-afroed filmmaker trying to juggle art and his domestic life and make a film about his own life and marriage — with Sy again doing the same as the actress-wife who concludes that if he does not let her play herself, their life is a hollow disaster. Anémone — a French cinema stalwart who got her start in a Garrel film years earlier — stars as the actress taking the wife’s part. Of course, Sy, with her glaring eyes and confrontational jaw, did get the role of the wife, just not of the actress who gets the role of the wife, in the movie as yet to be made but which we’re watching anyway. Sweet. [Zeitgeist Films; read the original review here.]
2. “Ornamental Hairpin”
(Hiroshi Shimizu, Japan, 1941)
Sorry again. Shimizu’s most renowned film is set entirely in a vacation spa during WWII, where the masseur staff are all blind, Buddhist monks arrive in noisy holiday throngs and another ersatz community forms around a young man on crutches and a geisha on the run. As fragile as a paper rose, and Shimizu shoots it that way, keeping his camera at a respectful distance but every now and then daring for a heartbreaking semi-close-up that threatens to shatter the peaceful pond surface for good. [Criterion Collection - Eclipse Series 15; read the original review here.]
1. “Mr. Thank You”
(Hiroshi Shimizu, Japan, 1936)
Ozu-observational but more organic and flexible, Shimizu was fascinated by spontaneous ad-hoc communities on the move — in this gentle comedy, a country bus crosses a landscape weathered but not destroyed by Depression poverty. Aboard, social trauma lurks unsaid under every exchange, and more elemental human poetry is packed into 76 minutes than in the last 10,000 hours of Hollywood film you’ve seen. [Criterion Collection - Eclipse Series 15; read the original review here.]
Runners-up (in order): “Nightwatching” (Peter Greenaway, UK, 2007; read the original review), “Vinyan” (Fabrice Du Welz, France/Belgium, 2008), “The Kaiser’s Lackey” (Wolfgang Staudte, East Germany, 1951; read the original review), “The GoodTimesKid” (Azazel Jacobs, US, 2005; read the original review), “Kept and Dreamless” (Vera Fogwill/Martín De Salvo, Argentina, 2005), “[Rec]“ (Jaume Balagueró /Paco Plaza, Spain, 2007), “Rosarigasinos” (Rodrigo Grande, Argentina, 2001), “My Effortless Brilliance” (Lynn Shelton, US, 2008), “Inheritance” (James Moll, US, 2006; read the original review).
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Tags: Absurdistan, Amat Escalante, Anders Morganthaler, Azazel Jacobs, Criterion Collection, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards!, Emergency Kisses, Fabrice Du Weiz, Film Movement, Gretchen, He Who Hits First, Hiroshi Shimizu, Hits Twice: The Urgent Cinema of Santiago Alvarez, I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar, In Love We Trust, Inheritance, James Moll, Jan Sikl, Japanese Girls at the Harbor, Jaume Balaguero, Kept and Dreamless, Los Bastardos, Louis Garrel, Lynn Shelton, Mamoru Oshii, Martin De Salvo, Mr. Thank You, My Effortless Brilliance, Nightwatching, Ornamental Hairpin, Paco Plaza, Peter Greenaway, Philippe Garrel, Princess, Private Century, Rodrigo Grande, Rosarigasinos, Santiago Alvarez, Seijun Suzuki, Sita Sings the Blues, Steve Collins, The GoodTimesKid, The Kaiser's Lackey, The Sky Crawlers, Veit Helmer, Vera Fogwill, Vinyan, Wang Xiaoshuai, Wolfgang Staudte, [REC]
