Ingmar Bergman (October)

"Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God."

Ingmar Bergman reminds me a bit of Werner Herzog in that they would both be dismissed as caricatures if their works weren't so damn earnest and great. Bergman's films (and through them, his views) concerning religion, faith, death, and family are immediately recognizable. They carry his dark signature and for that he is rightly known as one of the greatest auteur filmmakers of all time. They are all in Swedish and mostly in black and white. Having already seen The Seventh Seal, for this project I chose Fanny and Alexander, Through A Glass Darkly, Winter Light, Wild Strawberries, Persona, and The Virgin Spring. If this weren't already so ambitious I would've added Cries and Whispers as well as Hour of the Wolf. Luckily these movies mostly run short, so I was able to cruise through the six I chose fairly easily.

I started with the only color film of the bunch, Fanny and Alexander. Netflix sent me the 3.5 hour version and it was only afterwards through Wikipedia that I discovered a 5+ hour version existed. I decided to be happy with the version I saw. Fanny and Alexander is a very good family drama, filled with lively characters (the sexually over-active uncle is my favorite) and monumental performances, especially considering that a few of those performances come from children. It is often depressing, but manages not to get bogged down in hopelessness. Next I watched Through A Glass Darkly and I was surprised at how mature and explicit the story was. A psychologically disturbed girl seduces her brother, for example, and that's just a sub-plot. After that came Winter's Light, which again examined the themes of faith, love, loyalty, and family in a bleak Swedish setting. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this one, seeing as it would probably work even better as a play than a film.

Then I came to Persona. Wow. A lot of Bergman films have horrific elements, but this was the first straight-up horror movie I had seen, and boy did he knock it out of the park. The movie is about a nurse who takes a mute actress to an isolated home to help treat her. Their relationship is extremely complex, tangled up with elements of love, hate, guilt, jealousy, resentment and more. The movie is both shocking and very sad. I loved it and don't know why more horror junkies don't talk about it. It's about due for a remake, methinks. After this I watched Wild Strawberries and about a quarter of the way through realized I had seen it before but finished it anyways. It's an interesting tale of nostalgia and regret. Lastly I watched The Virgin Spring, which also surprised me with its X-ratedness. They show a virgin getting raped and murdered in a 1960 film. Intense. Also, I didn't know until afterwards that The Last House on the Left was a remake of this movie!

All in all, I think Bergman totally deserves his accolades. The movies are tough but generally enjoyable. They're a bit like Haneke's oeuvre- unsettling stories, thoughtful scripts, compelling imagery, A+ performances. It's probably time for me to watch The Seventh Seal again.

• Wild Strawberries (1957) - 7.5
• The Virgin Spring (1960) - 7
• Through A Glass Darkly (1961) - 7.5
• Winter Light (1963) - 7
• Persona (1966) - 9
• Fanny and Alexander (1982) - 8

And then we came to the end: Roman Polanski is the last director of this challenge. Wow. 

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!

Pedro Almodóvar (June)

"I don't want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. And in that representation, you use the colors you feel, and sometimes they are fake colors. But always it's to show one emotion."

I didn't exactly outline a thesis when I set about this project, but my goals were probably to become a more learned film-lover and to discover new films to love. So far all of the movies have helped to satisfy the former, but not all of them the latter. With Almodóvar, I can say without hesitation that I have found new films to love.

Why have I not seen these movies before? I feel like my friends, my university, and everyone else I can point a finger at has let me down in a tremendous way (except Dusty and Lizzie, who unabashedly love this man). Going into the month of May I had seen two Almodóvar films: Dark Habits (thanks Dusty) and the recent body horror/thriller The Skin I Live In. Seeing Dark Habits first was probably a mistake, because while the movie is fun, it is also campy and not altogether great. I should have had that impression washed away, however, by The Skin I Live In which I loved to pieces. Shame on me for not touting that one to all of my horror movie friends. Anyways, for whatever reason those are the only two films of his I'd ever seen and they aren't very indicative of the rest of his body of work. For this month, I chose five films: Bad Education, Talk to Her, Volver, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and All About My Mother.

Wow. Wowie. Wowza. How much praise can I heap unto these films before my hyperbole destroys the credibility of my reviews? Well, I can't help it. Pedro has done something incredible with his body of work. He tells colorful stories imbibed with a sense of magical realism, and yet the characters are grounded and three-dimensional. He tells stories about people, and it doesn't matter their gender, sexual orientation, age, or socio-economic class. He happens to be touted (rightfully) for telling amazing stories about women and members of the LGBT community, but he never calls attention to their minority status or in any way comes off as preachy. And yet how can you not praise the man for giving voices to all of these characters who are so often-relegated to minor or stereotypical roles? You have to praise him, but at the same time you hardly notice because the characters don't draw attention to themselves in that way. They are just a part of the story, and the stories are complex and engaging. There are passions, violence, romance, revenge, addiction, seduction, ghosts, harassment, murder, food, and family dramas! The stories are like novels, stuffed to the brim with characters whose journeys are filled with twists and turns that are exciting but not implausible. And it all feels so perfectly Spanish! The settings, the language, the food, the culture, the colors... and the compositions are stunning, worthy of being framed. And these films don't shy away from the inherent darkness present in families, in societies, and in Spain. These are often disturbing, traumatic films. And so I love them even more.

I am so happy to have discovered this body of work, and sad that it took me this long to do so. I won't get into the details of each film, they demand to be watched and in my case, re-watched. I will say that Bad Education and Volver particularly tickled my fancy, but even Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown (which I enjoyed the least of the group) was great. There were no misses.

• Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) - 8
• All About My Mother (1999) - 9
• Talk to Her (2002) - 9.5
• Bad Education (2004) - 10
• Volver (2006) - 10

I need to say two more things, here in the space usually reserved for a short note about who's up next. One, I just realized that he made those four movies in a row in a 7-year span, and that's frankly unbelievable to me. I would put that up there against any four movies that a director has made in a row as the best 4-in-a-row streak of all time.* And two, I can't express how happy I am that these movies are so much fun to watch! A lot of directors and movies that are well-regarded are also very inaccessible. That's not a knock on them, necessarily- not all movies should be popcorn flicks. Some movies are convoluted, dry, meandering, abstract, absurd, or otherwise not-easy to watch and that suits their purposes and intentions. But these Almodóvar movies are doubly impressive to me that they can be artsy and enjoyable (popcorn-y even) movies at the very same time. Bravo!

Up next is Truffaut!

*Other than Coppola with Godfather, Conversation, Godfather II, and Apocalypse Now. Can't forget about those four. Whoops.

Francis Ford Coppola (May)

"I think it's better to be overly ambitious and fail than to be under-ambitious and succeed in a mundane way. I have been very fortunate. I failed upward in my life!"

Francis Ford Coppola is a difficult filmmaker to write about in the scope of this project. Going into 2015, I had already seen The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and The Conversation. They happen to be three of my favorite and most-respected movies. With this in mind, I had very high hopes for Apocolypse Now (which I had seen parts of here and there) and didn't really know what to think of Rumble Fish, The Outsiders, and American Graffiti (which Coppola only produced).

I watched Apocolypse Now first and loved it. Loved it. It's the best movie I've watched this year with astonishing performances throughout. When you read about the turmoil behind the scenes, it's even more amazing that such a wonderful polished product came out the other end. This film easily could've never made it to print, like another Lost in La Mancha. I haven't gotten my hands on the making-of documentary Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocolypse that Francis' wife Eleanor directed, but I'd like to. In fact, I was so smitten with the movie that I grabbed the novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and read it within about 36 hours of finishing the movie. I might catch flak for this, but I preferred the film to the source material.

Anyways, after watching that triumph, I turned to American Graffiti. What can I say about this film? It's a classic, and it always makes me smile to know that teenagers have been doing the same stupid things for about 75 years. The back story to this one (and honestly, the whole story of the Coppola-Lucas-Spielberg friendship) is also quite fascinating, and led directly to the production of Apocolypse Now. I doubt I'd ever need to re-watch this one, but I'm glad I've seen it the whole way through now.

Which leaves us with the two S.E. Hinton adaptations, The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, released in the same calendar year. I don't really know what to make of these movies. They're both decently well-liked, and the former has a truly stellar ensemble cast. I'm glad I've seen the "stay golden, pony boy" line now with my own eyes. But frankly, I found these movies odd, scatterbrained, and often dull. The denim-gangs-getting-into-trouble story was similar in both films, and I was thoroughly confused by the chemically-colored fish in the otherwise black and white Rumble Fish. Mickey Rourke was quite good-looking in his day, though. That's about the highest praise I can shell out for these movies.

• American Graffiti (1973) - 7
• Apocolypse Now (1979) - 9.5
• The Outsiders (1983) - 6
• Rumble Fish (1983) - 5.5

The Coppola name/family is now basically an entire industry in Hollywood, but the patriarch who started it all hasn't made a well-liked movie in about three decades. After making some of the most beloved movies of all time, that's a pretty tough break- sorry Francis. Anyways next up are the fantastic films of Pedro Almodovar!!!

Federico Fellini (April)

"All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography."

Watching Fellini's films is a wild ride through a history of the man, a history of film technique, and history itself. As the above quote suggests, Fellini left a lot of himself in each of his works, but over the course of his life the style of his work changed radically. He came out of the age of Italian Neo-Realism in which films were severely "authentic" in stark contrast to the French New Wave stylizations that would follow. His early films in the 1950's were of this type, including La Strada which was one of my favorites. The man himself might disagree with these characterizations and categorizations, having once said "realism is a bad word. I see no line between the imaginary and the real." Moving forward in time, Fellini would go on to create some of the most beloved films in all of cinema, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and Amarcord. As expected, I enjoyed these movies as well.

As I mentioned, Fellini started out in realism and then migrated towards more stylized artsy fare. His work can be divided into eras and decade: realism (50s), stylization (60s), and nostalgia (70s). La Dolce Vita was the bridge between the first two groups, and caused quite an uproar upon its release due to its fervent sexuality. The films tend towards the long-side, but they have a kind of necessary momentum to them that fuels them forward from the start to the end. Apparently Fellini filmed chronologically and didn't review his footage before moving on to the next scenes. Ray Bradbury quoted him as saying, "Don't tell me what I'm doing. I don't want to know." His artsier movies, 8 1/2 and Fellini Satyricon are easy to get lost in. There are dreamlike visuals that demand study, but the next scene is underway before the last is clearly understood. In 8 1/2 this momentum works. Many filmmakers have tried to make a "meta" movie about filmmaking (this was Fellini's 8 1/2th film, having made 7 and a short before this), but few have succeeded in making it so dramatic, so complicated, so compelling, and so gorgeous. In fact I can't think of any, other than maybe Contempt which I watched earlier for this same project. On the other end of the spectrum, I found Fellini Satyricon (so named because "Satyricon" had a copyright issue) to be sloppy and extremely difficult to stay engaged with. The visuals are striking, for sure, but the plot and story (mostly just ancient myths) were all over the place. Though it came last, I actually watched Amarcord first. It surprised me with its frank look at religion, sexuality, and other such themes subtly tucked into a bildungsroman story in a small Italian town. It was funny too, which I always appreciate.

I had never seen any Fellini before this project, and now it's easy for me to understand why the man is so highly regarded. He dealt with depression and other demons throughout his life, but he never hesitated to turn the script and camera inward to take a serious and interesting look at himself through the lens of art. He shared this art with the world, and the world is better for it.

• La Strada (1954) - 8.5
• La Dolce Vita (1960) - 8
• 8 1/2 (1963) - 8.5
• Fellini Satyricon (1969) - 5
• Amarcord (1973) - 7.5

Next up is Francis Ford Coppola.