Tag Archives: Barbara Sukowa

CAPSULE: DALÌLAND (2022)

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DIRECTED BY: Mary Harron

FEATURING: , , Christopher Briney, Rupert Graves,

PLOT: A young art gallery intern has a brush with the strange world of during the master’s twilight years.

Still from Daliland (2022)

COMMENTS: Tucked into this quiet biopic is as apt a description of what attracts us, here at 366 Weird Movies, to the films we hunt for, enjoy, and cling to. On a cash errand for the maestro, James interrupts a gallery owner pitching a signed art print. The woman is intrigued, but hesitant, not sure what to make of the image which stands before her. “You… like it?” she asks. “I find it upsetting… I don’t think I want to live with someone else’s weird dream on my wall.” James replies, “But that weirdness, that’s what makes it original. It got to you, that’s why you’ll never get tired of it; you’ll never forget it.” He nails it, inadvertently securing the sale. Simultaneously, his description of that piece explains, as best one can, what Salvador Dalì, and all weird visionaries, are about.

Mary Harron’s film is more of an ensemble piece than the name (and grandiose subject matter) might suggest. In fact, much of the film involves Salvador Dalì (Ben Kingsley), now old, at times bordering on caricature, observing those around him: the trendy hangers-on, his friend Alice Cooper, his inspiring—but harsh—wife Gala (Barbara Sukowa), his new assistant James, and, most of all, Dalì. He speaks in third person. He performs without surcease in the presence of others. And he ages, as it is “very tiring being Dalì.” Put aside his trove of drawings, paintings, and sculptures; his life was a work of art, a performance piece for the ages.

Dalìland is polished and straightforward, but that does not make it resonate any less. While there are many searing, satirical jabs at posers and poseurs, show-offs and charlatans, Harron neither glorifies nor denigrates these oddballs and outcasts dancing along society’s periphery; those who, through their mien and flair mitigate the day-to-day blandness of those around them; the eye-catchers who make others wonder, “Just what the heck are they doing?” and who devote their life force to lending us a touch of the unreal—the sur-real, if you will. Dalì was many different people over the course of his long life, and the performer behind these acts is impossible to know. Indeed, it is clear even to a layman such as myself, that the “real” Dalì probably never existed, and Dalì could not have been happier for having achieved that.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The latest of the director’s splendidly offbeat biopics captures the madness, the comedy and the tragedy of the surrealist legend who turned his very identity into a work of art.”–Owen Gleiberman, Variety (contemporaneous)

CAPSULE: 12 MONKEYS (THE COMPLETE SERIES) (2015-2018)

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DEVELOPED BY: Travis Fickett, Terry Matalas

FEATURING: Aaron Stanford, Amanda Schull, Kirk Acevedo, , Emily Hampshire, Todd Stashwick,

PLOT: In 2043, the world is decimated by a viral pandemic that occurred in the late 2010’s. Scavenger James Cole (Stanford) is recruited by Katarina Jones (Sukowa), a scientist heading Project Splinter, which can send a person back in time. Cole is sent back to 2015 in the hope that he can prevent the outbreak. He encounters virologist Cassandra “Cassie” Railly (Schull) and enlists her help. They discover that things are not easy, as their attempts to prevent the outbreak are repeatedly foiled by the “Army of The 12 Monkeys” and their leader, “The Witness,” who has a grander plan in mind.

COMMENTS: “The best adaptations of IP aren’t in slavish service to their source material but are inspired by that material to say something new — something personal, something genuine. I’ve come to learn that adapting doesn’t have to be an act of re-creation. Just gratitude. We wanted to take our love of Gilliam’s film and with the advantage of a longer form narrative, more deeply explore what it made us hope and believe about the nature of time.”–series co-creator Terry Matalas.

The “12 Monkeys” series was inspired by the feature film Twelve Monkeys (1995). Generally, no one looks forward to television series based on popular films, although it’s a long established TV subgenre. It’s hard enough making a GOOD film that can hold an audience’s interest; with a television series, one has to repeat that success on a weekly basis, AND maintain quality for several years—if things go well for everyone. Some get lucky & hit gold (“M*A*S*H,” “Friday Night Lights”) while most others crash and burn and end up in the cultural dustbin.

So when it was announced that there would be a series based on Twelve Monkeys on SyFy, the initial reaction wasn’t favorable. After all, the movie was directed by , who puts his distinctive visual style even on what would be considered “work for hire” projects—which Twelve Monkeys technically was (David and Janet Peoples’ based their script on ‘s 1932 short La Jetee). With Gilliam having no involvement whatsoever in the new show, it makes perfect sense that most fans would consider it a dubious enterprise.

So, it was a pleasant surprise to watch the first episode in January 2015 and not find it inept and horrible; in fact, it was interesting enough to wonder how long it could sustain itself before collapsing into The Suck. Fortunately, it never did. Over four seasons, “12 Monkeys” kept its promise to its audience to provide quality storytelling. They knew to leave at the top of their game, as opposed to Continue reading CAPSULE: 12 MONKEYS (THE COMPLETE SERIES) (2015-2018)

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1980)

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Günter Lamprecht, , ,

PLOT: After four years in prison, wife-murderer Franz Bieberkopf is released into Weimar Germany; he tries to go straight, but with no means of employment, he soon returns to the criminal underworld, with tragic results.

Still from Berlin Alexanderplatz (epilogue) (1980)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: We’ve toyed with the idea of considering self-contained TV miniseries as “movies” for classification purposes before; Berlin Alexanderplatz, a celebrated masterpiece of world cinema from an auteur with eccentric tendencies but nothing on the List, makes perhaps the best case for loosening our criteria—especially since the result would be classified as “apocrypha” rather than canon. A miniseries adapting Alfred Döblin’s modernist novel, first broadcast on German television, Alexanderplatz is a fifteen hour dive into an enigmatic character told through a fluid mix of straight drama, melodrama, poetic monologue, and surrealism. The two-hour capstone installment, a frenzied passage dubbed “My Dream of the Dream of Franz Biberkopf by Alfred Döblin, An Epilogue,” could well stand alone as a weird movie classic—but it can’t be appreciated without first seeing the thirteen hours that came before.

COMMENTS: Oddly, it was the second episode that sold me on Berlin Alexanderplatz. The first introduced our protagonist, Franz, newly released from prison after a four year stay, briefly suffering from disabling agoraphobia until a friendly Jew tells him an obscure parable, visiting—and raping—an old acquaintance, and finally swearing an oath to go strait. It was strange stuff, setting up intriguing possibilities, but I was not all-in just yet.

That second episode was, in a way, comparatively ordinary. Desperate for a job, with legitimate employment in 1920s Berlin rare in even for non-felons, Franz agrees to put on a swastika armband—reluctantly—and sell newspapers for the newly-formed Nazi party. This decision causes him trouble when a fellow vendor, who happens to be Jewish, confronts him, followed by an old friend who’s now a dedicated Marxist. Franz, who is proud to be German but has nothing against the Jews (or anyone), eventually quits the job, but not before the gang of Communists accost him in a bar. He almost smooth talks his way out of the confrontation, but can’t resist responding to their taunts by singing a Nationalist song as a response to their chorus of the “Internationale.” Angered, they back him into a corner. In a frightened fury, one man against a gang, he is forced to raise a chair to defend himself.

It was at this point that I realized that I’d gone from simply following Franz’s story to rooting for the poor reprobate. Fassbinder brought me, slowly, to sympathize with a killer, a rapist, a pimp, and a Nazi Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1980)