As a fan of the STALKER videogames who went on to read the novel Roadside Picnic, I’ve been looking forward to watching this film for a while now, especially given director Andrei Tarkovsky’s glowing reputation. Our cinephile friend in particular thinks highly of Tarkovsky’s work and has recommended this film to us in the past.
Director Ari Folman is best known for Waltz with Bashir, an unnerving personal documentary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre done, done entirely in animation. The Congress is his latest work, a film combining live-action and animation and in which Robin Wright plays a version of herself as an aging actress who agrees to be scanned in order to make a digital copy of herself. Needless to say, this makes it a must-watch in my book.
This is the last of the selections from the course list, bringing us into the modern era of Hollywood. Those who have followed along so far will note that I seem to have a skipped a couple of movies. We’ve previously watched the classic Adventures of Robin Hood and I didn’t feel it necessary to rewatch it. As for All That Heaven Allows, I’ve already written a post about it here.
With this selection, the course’s list leaves the black and white era behind and enters the world of color movies. In truth, while The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was indeed one of the earliest Hollywood movies to be filmed in color, Hollywood continued to regularly produce black and white movies well into the 1960s at least. There are many reasons for this and not all of them are stylistic. Cost is always a consideration and there were worries about technological limitations and whether or not particular directors and their crew were comfortable and experienced with working in color.
Despite technically being a 2013 release, Ida was seen by most critics in 2014 and consequently appeared in many lists of the best films of last year. Fifteen minutes in and it’s immediately apparent why so many critics loved it. Every shot in this film is composed with such exquisite care that every frame of it could stand alone as a work of art. Whether it’s a close-up shot of a face in a moving car, a girl walking on the stairs or a cabin in the snow, each scene shows as much craft as a painting. It’s just astounding.
For once, it isn’t entirely clear to me why this film was included in the course’s watch list. My best guess is that it’s an early example of low-budget B-movies, especially one in the horror genre. Reading through Wikipedia, I see that it was withdrawn shortly after release due to being the subject of plagiarism lawsuit and was not available again for 50 years until after its copyright expired. I wonder if that fact will be relevant in the lectures.
Blue Ruin, made with a budget of less than US$500,000 with some of it raised from a Kickstarter campaign, was undeniably the indie darling of 2013. Made by a director, Jeremy Saulnier, so unknown that he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page yet, it won almost universal acclaim from critics. That makes it a must-watch in my book.