Michael Haneke (September)

"I want to make it clear: it's not that I hate mainstream cinema. It's perfectly fine. There are a lot of people who need to escape, because they are in very difficult life situations, so they have the right to escape from the world. But this has nothing to do with the art form."

Bleak. Difficult. Inaccessible. This is the strange, sorrowful world of Michael Haneke. There is beauty in the sadness, and the stories he tells have often not been told before. They aren't easily marketable because they are simple and they are tragic, but they are also powerful and emotional. Going into this month I had seen two Haneke films: Funny Games (the original one) and Caché. The former is one of my favorite horror (horror?) movies ever, and the later is a tense albeit slow-paced thriller. I suspected that his worldview (at least as represented by these films) was rather dark and cynical, but I still felt ill-prepared for the sheer amount of despair in the four movies I chose for this project: Time of the Wolf, The Piano Teacher, Amour, and The White Ribbon.

I watched Time of the Wolf first, and I can say that the opening scene shocked me to my core. I suppose there are other movies that have opened similarly, but I can't think of any that basically ruined my disposition for the entire rest of the day. As I'd find in these films time and time again, the characters in Time of the Wolf dealt with loneliness and (often pointless) violence for the duration of the runtime. The Piano Teacher came next, and I'm not sure what I expected but it wasn't what I got. Isabelle Huppert was amazing and the story about someone desperately trying to connect with another human but without the know-how to do so is fairly universal... but the violence, the bullying, the hyper-sexuality and sado-masochism and rape made it a bit difficult to appreciate. Or rather, all of that X-Rated stuff is what hits you first, and it takes a bit of thinking back on the movie to appreciate the more subtle nuances and emotional performances- but they're there.

I watched Amour next, and even though I basically knew what I was in for I still cried and cried towards the end of the film. As much as Time of the Wolf shocked me, Amour shocked me more. I didn't see the ending coming, and it snapped me out of my weepiness. But Jesus, even before the ending I was in love with Haneke for telling this most-difficult of stories. I have members of my family going through similar circumstances, as I suspect nearly everyone on the planet does, but nobody has told this story. The quote I opened this article with is especially poignant seen in the light of this movie: I don't want to think about the death of loved ones, in fact I want to escape thinking about it. But that's not always healthy, and some art is here to help us examine our own complex feelings. I never want to watch it again, but Amour to me is pretty much a perfect film. I finished the month with The White Ribbon, which somehow managed to out-bleak the other movies, which is a fairly monumental task. I found in Ribbon what I found in all of Haneke's work: brilliant compositions, long slow takes, and some of the best performances (from leads and ensemble alike) that I've ever seen. And all of them left me with a frowny-face, but that's not such a bad thing.

• The Piano Teacher (2001) - 7.5
• Time of the Wolf (2003) - 6.5
• The White Ribbon (2009) - 7
• Amour (2012) - 9.5

Also, I just need to point out that after 9 months of article-writing, I'm finally caught up and writing about the director I most-recently watched. Hooray for me! Next up is Ingmar Bergman.

Spike Lee (August)

"People of color have a constant frustration of not being represented, or being misrepresented, and these images go around the world."

It had to be Spike Lee in August, right? Lee's best-known work (and best work, for that matter) is Do The Right Thing which is basically the movie version of the month of August. It's hot, it's sweaty, fuses are short and tempers flare. It had to be Lee in August. Do The Right Thing is an incredibly important movie to me. It had a way of showing people with real faults, mistrusting one another despite living in tight spaces. It showed racial divides without being ham-fisted (like Crash and so many other movies that have tried to address race problems come off). Plus it's like a time capsule- the music, the clothes, the language... and say what you will about Spike Lee casting himself in most of his movies (early on, anyways) but Mookie is a fantastic and relatable character.

Other than DTRT I had also seen (and very much enjoyed) 25th Hour and Inside Man. Very different movies, but both had qualities that I appreciated. For this project I wanted to go back to Spike Lee's early days when he was making such a huge splash on independent cinema. Dude has made a ton of movies, so I chose the ones that I thought were most famous: Summer of Sam, Malcolm X, He Got Game, Clockers, She's Gotta Have It, and Crooklyn. I chose... mostly well. I didn't need Clockers (although it is Mekhi Phifer's first movie) and I probably should've added Jungle Fever and maybe one more, Bamboozled or Mo' Better Blues or something. Also Netflix didn't have Crooklyn dangit.

I started with Summer of Sam, which is a helluva ride. I love Adrien Brody and John Leguizamo's characters but the film was all over the place. Murder, drugs, clubs, sex... those aren't bad elements to have in a film but it felt awfully disjointed. Malcolm X was probably longer than it needed to be and the beginning felt like a very weird West Side Story-esque musical; not based in reality at all. But over the course of the 3.5 hour epic the story really came together. I didn't know much about Malcolm X going into the movie and by the end I was curious to learn even more. Crooklyn was underwhelming, as I mentioned, although Harvey Keitel puts in some good work in the "white cop with an idea" role and the twist did catch me off-guard. She's Gotta Have It is Lee's first "joint" and I can see why it put him on the map. It was unflinching and it looked at sexuality and responsibility in an engaging way- with black three-dimensional characters in lead roles! I didn't love it but I liked it and can see why it was pretty ground-breaking for the era (and budget!). Lastly I watched He Got Game and loved it! Ray Allen and Denzel Washington are both incredible in this father-son story, and the basketball star cameos are all great. This movie takes place in a universe where convicted murderers are set free and universities can tempt prospective students with sex and cars, but ignoring all that this movie is very fun.

Spike Lee has always tried to keep pace with Woody Allen in terms of movie outputs, and just like that old New Yorker Lee has struck movie gold many times. But maybe (t)he(y) should focus a bit more on the quality of each one rather than putting >1 out every year.

• She's Gotta Have It (1986) - 7
• Malcolm X (1992) - 7
• Clockers (1995) - 5
• He Got Game (1998) - 7.5
• Summer of Sam (1999) - 5.5

September brings us the bleak world of Michael Haneke, and I'm finally caught up with the present!

François Truffaut (July)

"I have always preferred the reflection of life to life itself."

Being a Godard lover, I don't know why it took me so long to watch any Truffaut movies. I had seen a total of 0 going into this project- that's shameful. Choosing which of his movies to watch was a little tricky, but there were a few I knew I couldn't miss: The 400 Blows, The Last Metro, and Shoot the Piano Player being chief among them. I also tried to toss in Jules et Jim and Day for Night but inexplicably the latter is not available on Netflix discs. C'mon Netflix, that's an Oscar winner!

Watching Truffaut is interesting for a variety of reasons. For one thing, much like Fellini his films are highly autobiographical. They feature kids with bad home lives or hopeless romantics. Even the bigger films have his style- a trademark mix of the light-hearted and the melancholy. He also helped found the French New Wave movement, although (other than Shoot the Piano Player) his films are not very experimental. Truffaut and Godard had an interesting relationship (he helped write Breathless) which eventually devolved into outright and public denunciations. Strange because their contributions to cinema are so contemporary and entangled...

Anyhoo, The 400 Blows was sad but great. It featured Jean-Pierre Leaud as Antoine Doinel, a sort of alter-ego character representing Truffaut. The director would return and use that character (and actor) many times throughout his career. In this one he was just a child- a bit of a mischief-maker whose circumstances go from typical boyish antics into a much darker place. Truffaut was not one to shy away from a tragic story, even (especially) when it was his own. The Last Metro was a radical change of pace, a story about a Jewish theater director hiding out in a basement while his wife directs a large production. The love triangle is atypical and the portrayal a bit surprising. I liked it! Shoot the Piano Player is a gangster movie that doesn't take gangsters seriously. As I mentioned, it was the most New Wave-y of them and I appreciated that. Lastly, Jules et Jim was a decades long love story about a friendship twisted into something ugly by the introduction of a pretty woman. I wasn't expecting this one to be my favorite, but something about these small, personal, havoc-ridden love stories really speaks to me. And the music was incredible! "Le cimetiére" by George Delarue rocked my socks (in a slow, sad way); Youtube it if you don't believe me.

Overall, I found Almodóvar a verrry tough act to follow but Truffaut carried it admirably- these are damn good movies that I'll one day revisit. Now to get my hands on Day for Night and Fahrenheit 451...

• The 400 Blows (1959) - 7.5
• Shoot the Piano Player (1960) - 7.5
• Jules et Jim (1962) - 8.5
• The Last Metro (1980) - 7

Next month we're (briefly) back to English-language films with the movies, ahem, I mean joints of Spike Lee!