Unfiltered Camels create so much smoke it’s like you’re in a Noir film.
I watched Jules et Jim tonight, one of the many canonical films I had never seen. While I loved the film, from the famous images of the three main characters running across the bridge I thought it was going to be much more playful, like Bande à part (mostly because of the similarity of this scene with that film’s race through the Louvre) or any Godard film from the French New Wave, but it was a fucking depressing. I had once read an article that alleged to refute the so-called popular reading that the film glorified polygamy, and I guess this article instilled in me a preconception of what the film would be, but how the writer, or anyone for that, managed to see any hint of joy in Catherine’s attempt to “invent love” is beyond me. Sorry 1960s, but I think Truffaut came down pretty hard on the side of monogamy here.
I saw Nowhere Boy at Moonlight Cinema last night and was awe-struck that the filmmakers could take the story of John Lennon’s young life and make it boring. The story focused entirely on the MOW territory of Lennon’s relationship with his mother and aunt, and completely ignored any exploration of his motivation to write songs, apart from one scene where he seems to want to be Elvis Presley. However it was nice that we got a roped-off area and free food and drinks.
I saw The Road tonight and was totally blown away. It’s like a ton of despair on a thimble of hope, with the same utter commitment to tone as Tarkovsky or Malick.
