Thoughts on the 2015 Director Breakdown Challenge

Wow- I did it! I set my mind to something, and I did it!

56 films by 13 directors in one calendar year. Actually I finished before November by doubling up in three different months. This project has been a major time-suck but I couldn't be happier that I stuck with it. As a brief reminder, the directors that I watched (in order) were: Jean-Luc Godard, Wong Kar-wai, Terrence Malick, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Robert Altman, Federico Fellini, Francis Ford Coppola, Pedro Almodóvar, François Truffaut, Spike Lee, Michael Haneke, Ingmar Bergman, and Roman Polanski.

I feel much better-versed in the language of film now- some serious knowledge gaps have been closed. And yet, the project was far from perfect. In December of 2014 when I put this little shindig together, I probably didn't spend enough time deciding on who to watch or what films to watch. This is an immense undertaking, and the pre-production could've been handled with a little more care. Why not David Lynch over Wong Kar-wai? How did I pick Alphaville over Week End or Masculin Feminin? Frankly I can't remember. I'm also a little dismayed at how many films I couldn't find via (free) streaming services or on Netflix discs: Day for Night, Short Cuts, Crooklyn, and many more.

That being said, for such a hastily put-together project I'm also pretty proud of how well it turned out. All of these directors have contributed special and impressive things to the art of cinema and I don't regret watching a single one, even if they didn't all agree with me. I discovered that I'm impatient with a certain style of meandering art-house film, and unfortunately that description fits a lot of titles from a lot of the directors on this list. I especially struggled with Wong Kar-wai and Terrence Malick, and it probably didn't help that I watched them back-to-back. Robert Altman's movies are also fairly anti-adrenaline-inducing, and I'm glad that I front-loaded these three filmmakers. If they had come more towards the end I might not have made it.

I actually preferred a lot of the depressing movies on this list to the slow-paced ones. Especially films by Haneke, Bergman, and Polanski. I was either chilled to the bone or moved to tears by some of their movies, but I was never bored (well, maybe once during The White Ribbon). I understand why people don't love to put these movies on on a sunny Saturday afternoon (which is exactly what we did with both The Piano Teacher and The Pianist) because they make you feel shitty, but even when I find the subject matter unpleasant I don't necessarily find the experience unpleasant. I know people (even in the film industry, or perhaps especially in the film industry) who only like to watch popcorn action flicks or happy-ending romantic comedies. That's fine if you're only ever looking for escapism. But then you might forget about the "art" part of cinema that can stretch so many emotional muscles. It's like food- even if you're usually drawn to the sweet (romance/comedy) or salty (drama/action) stuff, I think it gets awfully boring if you don't mix it up with spicy (scary), sour (sad), tangy (experimental), and umami (educational) flavors. There's a whole beautiful spectrum for your palate to experience. The same goes for stylistic choices or black and white films or films with subtitles. Don't knock it till you try it, everyone- you might not know what amazing lovely things you're missing!

My favorite films of this experiment were Contempt, Apocalypse Now, 8 1/2, Jules et Jim, Persona, Repulsion, and all of the movies by Pedro Almodóvar. If you can't tell by that list, I like movies with a certain degree of nastiness in them. I like tension. If I had to pick a favorite genre, it would be Tense. That feeling can come about in psychological horror movies, war movies, or domestic dramas. Tension can rise up and flare in just about any situation, and I like the movies that examine the build-up and fallout that results. I need to give a special shout-out to Almodóvar who made the most colorful, savage, comical, interesting, and intense movies of anyone on this list. I cannot stress that enough. If I hated every other movie I watched this year, this project would still be worth it for introducing me to that man's body of work. 

As the year and the project wore on, I realized I was still missing a few highly-regarded works from these directors. I'd like to fill in the knowledge gaps within the knowledge gaps, and someday soon watch these movies: 

Godard: Week End, Masculin Feminin, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, Goodbye to Language

Almodóvar: The Flower of My Secret, Broken Embraces

Truffaut: Day For Night, Stolen Kisses, The Wild Child, Fahrenheit 451

Altman: Short Cuts, Brewster McCloud, Gosford Park

Lee: Jungle Fever, Crooklyn

Fellini: Nights of Cabiria

Bergman: Cries and Whispers, Hour of the Wolf, Scenes from a Marriage

There are also a number of directors I'd like to add to this list of 13, including: David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Allen, Gaspar Noe, Bernardo Bertolucci, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Bogdanovitch, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Errol Morris, Werner Herzog, and Lars Von Trier. Hey that's 11 directors- I could do that in 2016! But maybe I need a year off so I don't burn-out, which almost happened a few times this year.

In the interest of being completist, here is the final list of movies that I watched, their rankings out of 10, and Academy Awards they won:

• Jean-Luc Godard (January)
• Vivre Sa Vie (1962) - 7.5
• Contempt (1963) - 8.5
• Pierrot le Fou (1963) - 8
• Alphaville (1964) - 6
• Wong Kar-wai (January)
• Chungking Express (1994) - 6
• In The Mood for Love (2000) - 6
• The Grandmaster (2013) - 5.5
• Terrence Malick (February)
• Badlands (1973) - 7.5
• Days of Heaven (1978) - 6 - Best Cinematography
• The Thin Red Line (1998) - 7 
• Alejandro Jodorowsky (March)
• El Topo (1970) - 5.5
• The Holy Mountain (1973) - 6
• Santa Sangre (1989) - 6.5
• Robert Altman (March)
• M*A*S*H (1970) - 8 - Best Adapted Screenplay
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) - 8
• The Long Goodbye (1973) - 7
• Nashville (1975) - 7.5 - Best Original Song
• The Player (1992) - 6.5
• Federico Fellini (April)
• La Strada (1954) - 8.5 - Best Foreign Language Film
• La Dolce Vita (1960) - 8 - Best Costume Design
• 8 1/2 (1963) - 8.5 - Best Foreign Language Film, Best Costume Design
• Fellini Satyricon (1969) - 5
• Amarcord (1973) - 7.5 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Francis Ford Coppola (May)
• American Graffiti (1973) - 7
• Apocalypse Now (1979) - 9.5 - Best Cinematography, Best Sound
• The Outsiders (1983) - 6
• Rumble Fish (1983) - 5.5
• Pedro Almodóvar (June)
• Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) - 8
• All About my Mother (1999) - 9 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Talk To Her (2002) - 9.5 - Best Original Screenplay
• Bad Education (2004) - 10
• Volver (2006) - 10
• François Truffaut (July)
• The 400 Blows (1959) - 7.5
• Shoot the Piano Player (1960) - 7.5
• Jules et Jim (1962) 8.5
• The Last Metro (1980) - 7
• Spike Lee (August)
• 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
• Michael Haneke (September)
• The Piano Teacher (2001) - 7.5
• Time of the Wolf (2003) - 6.5
• The White Ribbon (2009) - 7
• Amour (2012) - 9.5 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Ingmar Bergman (October)
• Wild Strawberries (1957) - 7.5
• The Virgin Spring (1960) - 7 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Through a Glass Darkly (1961) - 7.5 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Winter Light (1963) - 7
• Persona (1966) - 9
• Fanny and Alexander (1982) - 8 - Best Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design
• Roman Polanski (October)
• Repulsion (1965) - 9
• Tess (1979) - 7 - Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design
• Frantic (1988) - 6
• The Pianist (2003) - 8.5 - Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Lead Actor
• The Ghost Writer (2010) - 7
• Carnage (2011) - 7

That's 25 Oscar wins (including 8 Best Foreign Language wins), and of course that's not counting all of the nominations, Palm d'Ors, Golden Bears, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, etc. etc. that these garnered. It's a prestigious bunch. Perhaps the most shocking revelation is the lack of Best Director wins, which only 1 director got 1 time (Polanski for The Pianist). I thought auteurs were meant to be honored for their visions! As some of these directors might say, c'est la vie.

Well, I think that's just about it. As mentioned above, there's plenty more cinema to explore and in fact I'm probably going to dive right into David Lynch in November. I'll also try to get my hands on some of the films from these directors that I missed. What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment. Delicious, sour, spicy, tangy, rich punishment. As for this blog, it has served me well for the purpose of cataloging this year-long journey but I hope to now expand it and use it for other avenues. I want to publish list-icles, movie reviews, op-ed pieces, and anything else that I fancy as it relates to the world of movies. And with <1 average viewer per day, I doubt anyone cares what I do with this blog! So I'll use it how I please! Thanks for reading, mom and girlfriend!!

Roman Polanski (October)

"I would like to be judged for my work, and not for my life."

Can you truly divorce the artist and his art? This is an ethical dilemma that I struggled with throughout my time watching Roman Polanski's films. If I did not know the morbid, awful details of this man's oh-so-public private life, would I respect the movies more?

Here's what I know about Roman Polanski: he is an outstandingly talented filmmaker. I think that is beyond argument. Before this month began I had seen Knife in the Water, The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby, and Chinatown with the latter two being personal favorites of mine as well as undisputed classics of cinema. Many of the filmmakers I've watched stick with one style or genre or type of movie, but Polanski is a hopper: he makes noir, war, horror, thrillers, and period pieces and they are (generally) perfectly executed. The only other filmmakers who come to mind who can jump around so flawlessly are the Coen brothers and Stanley Kubrick- that's high company. Polanski is an Oscar-winner and he has been nominated for that prestigious award in four different decades; that's longevity in a notoriously shifting industry. For this project alone I watched movies he created from 1963 to 2011, and he's still making them! I for one hope he's got many more to come.

Here's what else I know about Roman Polanski: he was born in France to Polish parents but moved back to Krakow in 1936, where he would endure the Holocaust. His mother was killed in Auschwitz, and in fact 90% (around 3 million people) of the Jewish population in Poland would be killed during World War II. He lived in and escaped from the ghetto and was separated from his father for many years. After the war, Polanski went to film school and became involved in the film industry. He made his first feature Knife in the Water in 1962, which garnered a Best Foreign Film nomination at the Academy Awards. Throughout the 1960s Polanski lived in France, England, and the United States and continued to expand his critically-beloved filmography. In 1969, his pregnant wife Sharon Tate was murdered in Los Angeles by members of Charles Manson's so-called family. He was in London at the time. In 1977, Polanski was arrested at Jack Nicholson's house for the rape of a 13-year old girl whom he had given quaaludes. He was indicted on 6 criminal charges and held in prison for 43 days. After a plea-bargain, Polanski was promised by a judge that he would be put on probation and serve no further jail time. After Polanski realized that the judge was going to renege on his promise, he fled the country and moved to France where he was protected from extradition. Since then, he's been living as a fugitive and the charges remain pending. The 13-year old victim later sued Polanski and settled with him out of court for a large sum. Since that time, the victim has long been an outspoken proponent of Polanski's. She has publicly said the charges should be dropped and that they both would love to put the past behind him. Polanski has been arrested in Europe and held on house arrest as recently as 2010, but so far any attempt at extradition has failed.

Okay, whew! That's a lot of background, right? But it's important not only as a background (to decide whether or not this guy should be in jail or whether or not anyone should watch his movies) but also because the subject matter of his life is present in his movies. For this month I chose The Pianist, Frantic, Repulsion, Tess, The Ghost Writer, and Carnage. The Pianist takes place in the Krakow ghetto during WWII. Frantic is about a man who loses his wife. Tess and Repulsion are both about young girls who are raped or deathly afraid of being raped. See the familiarity with the above story? The movies about young girls being raped were especially difficult for me to watch, knowing the details of Polanski's sordid crime. In fact, Repulsion was easier for me to watch, knowing it was made 12 years before the crime rather than Tess, which was made just a year and a half later. The rumors that Polanski had a romantic relationship with the 15-year old star of Tess made it even more difficult to get through.

But the movies themselves are mostly great. Lizzie and I watched The Pianist first and it ruined our day. It's an extremely vicious look at the savagery of war, and young Adrien Brody definitely deserved his Oscar win (at 29 he was the youngest Lead Actor winner of all time). It's a sad but necessary reminder of how brutal the situation in Poland was, and how easily our fragile society can collapse. Next I watched Frantic, which though enjoyable was the weak spot among these films. I want to make a supercut of every time Harrison Ford clumsily hurts himself in the movie. It's a lot of times. After that came Repulsion which was the surprise super-hit of the bunch. Polanski later said he made the movie simply to fund his next one (the less-commercial Cul-de-sac) but he accidentally created a winner. The imagery was phenomenal; I loved it. Tess was next, and as I mentioned I had a hard time with the subject matter, despite the story being an adaptation of the 1891 novel Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy. The film was beautiful but it felt a lot like Barry Lyndon; painfully slow to watch even though I knew it was gorgeous. It almost feels like watching a series of paintings for 2.5 hours. After that I watched The Ghost Writer which is very well-liked but it felt like a fairly standard political thriller to me. The ending was a lot of fun though. Finally I finished out this project with Carnage, the 2011 adaptation of a play with an all-star cast of Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Cristoph Waltz, and Kate Winslet. This one reaaaally felt like a play (it's just the four of them in one apartment for 90 minutes) but it was still very beautiful and fun to watch. I'd still prefer it as a play I think. And that's technically it for the great director challenge of 2015! I'm going to do a wrap-up post rather than try to stuff it into this (already too-long) Polanski article.

• Repulsion (1965) - 9
• Tess (1979) - 7
• Frantic (1988) - 6
• The Pianist (2003) - 8.5
• The Ghost Writer (2010) - 7
• Carnage (2011) - 7

As I mentioned above, this is technically the end of the road for the great director challenge. I watched 13 directors in 10 months (because I doubled up 3 times). I'm probably going to extend this project to cover a few more directors (Lynch, Noe, Bertolucci, etc.) but the initial resolution is now complete! A full write-up post on my thoughts on the project soon to come.

Overview of the 2015 Director Breakdown Challenge

I probably should have made this post on December 31st, 2014 rather than midway through March, but here we are and what're ya gonna do. My new year's resolution this year was to close some gaps in my movie-knowledge by watching some of the classics that I had missed over the years. Rather than throw darts at the "1001 movies you should watch before you die list," I decided to break it down by directors that I appreciated (or who I assumed I would appreciate) who had three or more movies that I hadn't seen yet. Then I could choose 12 directors and knock one out each month.

I scoured the internet for "best-of" lists to narrow down my potential candidates, but in the end it wasn't too tricky. There aren't that many directors who have a very large ouevre, are extremely critically-acclaimed, and are mostly-unwatched-by-me. The ones I did find were mostly white(ish) males, but that group has held the overwhelming majority in this 100-year old industry so I guess that shouldn't have surprised me. In the end I got it down to 13 candidates and decided I could bleed into 2016 if need be. Here they are in alphabetical order, although I've been choosing which one to watch at random:

• Pedro Almodovar
• All About My Mother
• Talk To Her
• Volver
• Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown
• Robert Altman
• The Long Goodbye
• MASH
• McCabe and Mrs. Miller
• Nashville
• Shortcuts
• Ingmar Bergman
• Cries and Whispers
• Fanny and Alexander
• Persona
• Through A Glass Darkly
• Wild Strawberries
• Francis Ford Coppola
• American Graffiti
• Apocalypse Now
• The Outsiders
• Rumble Fish
• Federico Fellini
• 8 1/2
• Amarcord
• La Dolce Vita
• La Strada
• Satyricon
• Jean-Luc Godard
• Alphaville
• Contempt
• Pierrot le Fou
• Vivre Sa Vie
• Michael Haneke
• Amour
• The Piano Teacher
• Time of the Wolf
• The White Ribbon
• Alejandro Jodorowsky
• The Holy Mountain
• Santa Sangre
• El Topo
• Spike Lee
• Bamboozled
• Clockers
• Crooklyn
• He Got Game
• She's Gotta Have It
• Summer Of Sam
• Terrence Malick
• Badlands
• Days of Heaven
• The Thin Red Line
• Roman Polanski
• Carnage
• Frantic
• The Ghost Writer
• The Pianist
• Repulsion
• François Truffaut
• The 400 Blows
• Day For Night
• Jules and Jim
• The Last Metro
• Shoot the Piano Player
• Wong Kar Wai
• Chungking Express
• The Grandmaster
• In The Mood For Love

Whew- that's quite a list! There are a few I maybe saw when I was very young, but they qualified because I cannot remember a single thing about them. I also have seen a number of great movies by these directors (Do The Right Thing, Breathless, Chinatown, etc.) but clearly still missed a lot of their work. Most of them I don't have any excuse for not seeing yet- and that's why I'm doing this! Hooray for filling knowledge gaps!

Once I got started I noticed that many of these directors were from different parts of the world and I decided to try to pair some cuisine with my cinema- that half of the experiment hasn't been going so well (although I'm still trying to make it work). The movie watching has been going swimmingly however; in January I knocked out Godard and Wong Kar Wai, in February (short month) I watched Malick, and earlier this week I wrapped up Jodorowsky. I'll do a full post per director after this initial post (I owe them that much) and then hopefully post more regularly as I go along. Next up: Robert Altman!