Tag Archives: Literary

CAPSULE: BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMAN (2022)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Pierre Földes

FEATURING: Voices of Amaury de Crayencour, Arnaud Maillard, Mathilde Auneveux, Pierre Földes; Ryan Bommarito, Marcelo Arroyo, Shoshana Wilder (English dub)

PLOT: A salaryman struggles emotionally when his depressed wife leaves him; meanwhile, his co-worker is approached by a giant talking frog who insists that the timid accountant assist him in forestalling an earthquake set to devastate Tokyo.

Still from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2022)

COMMENTS: The blind willow of the title is a fictional tree; flies bear pollen from its blossoms and deposit it into the ear of a woman, causing her to fall into a deep, fairy-tale sleep. The fable is related from inside a flashback in one of the stories that compromise this semi-anthology film. It’s one of many mysterious strands running through Pierre Földes cinematic debut, adapted from six Haruki Murakami (Drive My Car) short stories. The film follows three main protagonists, and one anthropomorphic Frog, through dismal-but-bearable lives in a post-earthquake Tokyo. The movie marches the trio through bouts of catatonic depression, workplace humiliations, odd vacations, encounters with magical restaurateurs, ambiguous erotic and semi-erotic encounters, a search for a missing cat, dreams, and one epic, hallucinatory quest.

The stories are all suffused with gentle melancholy and a sense of humanity’s search for meaning. No answers are given or purposes uncovered, except, perhaps, in the case of accountant Katagiri, who, with the help of the movie’s breakout character, the loquacious and puissant Frog, finally achieves recognition for his years of long and thankless service. The film’s general tone is more attuned to Komura, who endures abandonment by his wife with quiet and insular stoicism, and Kyoko, whose dissatisfaction remains inexpressible, even to herself. The figurants the main characters sit beside on subways, buses, or cafeterias are all silent and spectral, drawn as translucent overlays. There’s something ghostly about the film’s protagonists, who move about as if they’re bound to the world by some unremembered purpose, so it only makes sense that they inhabit a spectral civilization.

The artwork reinforces the calm, poetic, dreamlike mood. Color palettes are muted, with static backgrounds; in the loveliest composition, two characters stand at a bus stop in front of what looks like a springtime watercolor landscape of cherry blossoms and tall grass, a brown mound of mountain arising in the deep background. At times, especially in scenes with Frog, the art can recall anime, although this is not as much of a stylistic touchstone as the Japanese setting might suggest. The movie takes time out for flights of fancy in several dream sequences—Katagiri finds himself flying through the sky in the belly of a worm who resolves into a train as he wakes—but also in waking daydreams, as when Komura sees the whorls of his nephew’s ear morph into a nude woman, or when a spectral salmon swims above two lovers in bed. These digressions harness the fantasy power of animation in a way that seems more natural than it would in a live-action feature, suggesting that the characters’ interior realities have as much emotional weight as their dialogue. Földes has an odd trademark of drawing his character’s lips unusually wide and dark, but this is a minor distraction.

The multitalented Földes, previously known mainly as a composer, not only adapted Murakami’s stories into the screenplay, directed, and wrote the score, but also voiced Frog in both the French and English versions. Perhaps only his love of Murakami’s prose pulled him into filmmaking, but I hope this isn’t the last we see from him. He’s too skilled at this to sit on the sidelines.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a film that’s lovely, mysterious and also, at times, fittingly odd… the film itself is sync with Murakami’s particular blend of the quotidian and the surreal.”–Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter (contemporaneous)

CAPSULE: L’INFERNO (1911)

DIRECTED BY: Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, Giuseppe De Liguoro

FEATURING: Salvatore Papa, Arturo Pirovano, Emilise Beretta, Augusto Milla

PLOT: In the company of the poet Virgil, Dante Alighieri descends into Hell, where he discovers the variety of malefactors consigned to the netherworld by their misdeeds on Earth and the array of torments visited upon them.

Still from L'Inferno (1911)

COMMENTS: When the pioneers of the Italian film industry set about creating the country’s first feature-length motion picture (a format still in its infancy in 1911), they most decidedly did not screw around. No, they went straight for an adaptation of a foundational piece of literature, the one that did as much as anything to establish the language and the national identity. Without hesitation, they turned to Dante.

It’s an ambitious undertaking. “The Inferno,” the first part of Dante’s epic Divine Comedy, is a true horror story, a warning about the torture that awaits sinners in the afterlife. Part of what made Dante’s work so noteworthy was his willingness to name names. Various popes, Holy Roman Emperors, and other notable figures are depicted, along with their crimes and punishments. And his God is a harsh one: Julius Caesar’s assassins undergo perpetual torment, but Caesar himself was relegated to Limbo, an inferior paradise for those who made the terrible mistake of existing on Earth before Christ. It took a very pure life to stay out of Dante’s Hell, and he was only too happy to reveal the consequences of failure.

If all it took to get on our list was the “Indelible Image” category, L’Inferno would make the cut in a cakewalk. The limited practical and special effects of early cinema yield terrific results, conveying Hell as a real and horrible place in spectacular fashion. The harsh landscapes are difficult to navigate, and usually strewn with writhing bodies in some unholy mix of Hieronymous Bosch paintings and Spencer Tunick photographs. Multiple exposures conjure up rivers in the sky composed of thousands of the damned. Forced perspective brings the travelers into the realm of the mighty and rageful Pluto, and blackout techniques permit one doomed soul to carry his own head. The film’s climactic tableau combines these methods and more to present a three-mouthed Lucifer devouring some of history’s most notorious traitors; it resembles nothing so much as Goya’s grotesque classic “Saturn”. This appears simplistic to modern eyes but remains quite powerful in its effect. It’s as though the filmmakers carefully studied the magical techniques of Georges Méliès for the sole purpose of applying them to horror.

But alas, imagery alone is not enough to make a weird movie. The film of “The Inferno” suffers from the format that inspired it: it’s a travelogue. A travelogue through Hell, but a winding, episodic tour nonetheless. Dante visits a new circle of Hell, Virgil explains what the condemned did on Earth and what fate awaits them now, and we see that fate enacted. There’s not much more to it, so that this work of tremendous faith and contrition is reduced to a haunted house. Hell? It’s pretty bad, say the filmmakers. Rinse and repeat.

L’Inferno is a landmark film, and it creates dramatic and powerful screen pictures that most modern CGI-powered spectacles would be hard-pressed to match. Those pictures are often ugly and monstrous, and the rhythms are repetitive, which is probably why it hasn’t endured like more fantastical or pastoral works of the period. But it certainly deserves to be remembered. To abandon it to history would be a sin.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Anyone with an interest in the history of cinema should make an effort to seek this film out. Rightly famous, it is quite bizarre, unique and — in a way — haunting.” – Richard Cross, 20/20 Movie Reviews

(This movie was nominated for review by “Pete.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

CAPSULE: DANTE’S INFERNO (2007)

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DIRECTED BY: Sean Meredith

FEATURING: Voices of ,

PLOT: A faithful update of Dante’s “Inferno” to modern times, performed with stick puppets, as 35-year-old Dante is led on a tour of Hell to see the ironic punishments inflicted on various species of sinners.

Still from Dante's Inferno (2007)

COMMENTS: Written in the 1300s, Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia was a comedy in the classical sense: as opposed to tragedy, it had a happy ending (at least for the protagonist, if not for the author’s enemies who get written into eternal punishment). Sean Meredith’s puppet take on Dante is surprisingly faithful to the plot structure of the famous “Inferno” cantos, but he adheres to the modern sense of “comedy”: stuff that makes you laugh. Despite the movie’s literacy, some of the jokes can get pretty lowbrow: told Charon will ferry our travelers across the Styx, contemporary Dante remarks, “I love Styx! Ever hear their ‘Paradise Theater’ album?” Other jokes are more clever: Dante’s city of Dis is now a “planned community.” They even throw in a little “Schoolhouse Rock” style parody (the damned flatterers are housed at a Hellish version of the U.S. Capitol).

The updated time period means that Hell now appears much like Los Angeles (a joke in itself). Modernizing the setting allows the filmmakers to make two kinds of commentaries. On the one hand, they can speculate about new residents who might have taken up quarters in Old Nick’s slums since the original poem text-locked in 1320. Some of the newcomers are obvious: Hitler gets in (along with Ronald Reagan, both condemned for consulting astrologers). So does Condoleezaa Rice (although she’s not named), vacuumed up by Judge Minos for lying about WMDs. The other layer of critique occurs due to the culture clash between ancient medieval morals and post-Enlightenment ethics: Dante naturally wonders why his favorite schoolteacher is condemned to dance to house music for all eternity. And a Muslim cabdriver righteously complains about being condemned as a heretic—and, breaking the fourth wall, about being depicted as a stereotype in a puppet movie.

The production leans hard into the artificiality of its puppet-show presentation (which is a type of adaptation that might actually have been made around Dante’s time). In the very first scene, modern Dante rises from a drunken stupor; no attempt is made to hide the string that pulls the paper figure upright. Throughout, rods and wires and popsicle sticks can be seen pushing and pulling the figures across the crosshatched backgrounds of the world. Dante has an Adam’s apple made from a paper tab that moves independently to show fear. At one point, a puppet is quickly flipped from a calm side to an outraged face to express sudden rage. Then there are the graphically pornographic puppets populating the circle of lust, which must be seen to be believed (Dante certainly would not have approved). The team of puppeteers know all the tricks to this limited art form, but after a while you stop noticing the artifice and simply accept this two-dimensional cardboard landscape as a “real” world. Somehow, the producers attracted recognizable talent for small voice acting roles, including Martha Plimpton as a demonic pimp, Tony Hale as Ovid, and Olivia D’Abo as Beatrice.

The movie is not really that weird—although anyone not familiar with Dante’s original schema might find the concept befuddling—but by taking us on an amusing tour of a newly renovated Hell in a brisk 75 minutes, Dante’s Inferno earns a recommendation for English majors with a sense of humor, both those who love and those who hate The Divine Comedy. Released straight to DVD and never reprinted, Dante’s Inferno is a rare find. If you’re searching for it, beware of purchasing the more abundant Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010) by accident.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a weirdly reimagined and raucously updated animated excursion through The Inferno…”–Prairie Miller, Newsblaze (DVD)

(This movie was nominated for review by Leslie Rae, who called it “amazing and hilarious and totally ridiculous.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

229. ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD (1990)

“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.”
–T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Tom Stoppard

FEATURING: , , , Iain Glen

PLOT: Two of Hamlet’s old school chums are summoned to Elsinore to glean what afflicts the moody prince. Along their journey they encounter a traveling troupe of Players, whose leader offers to a put on a performance for them. Magically transported to the castle from the Players’ stage, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find themselves trapped within the convoluted machinations of the royal court, confused as to their own identities and struggling to keep their heads while discussing basic questions of existence and fate.

Still from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)

BACKGROUND:

  • Adapted from his own 1967 hit play, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is the first and (so far) only film directed by accomplished playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard (who also contributed to Brazil).
  • The title comes straight from “Hamlet,” from the very last scene (Act V, Scene II). Arriving in Denmark to find nearly everyone in the royal court dead, the English ambassador bemoans, “The sight is dismal,/And our affairs from England come too late./The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,/To tell him his commandment is fulfill’d,/That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.”
  • Though it received tepid-to-positive reviews from contemporary critics (with most of the negative reviews comparing it unfavorably to the stage experience), Rosencrantz & Guildenstern did bag the top prize at the 1990 Venice Film Festival.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: I suspect I take no risk of spoiling the ending (the title itself gives something of a hint as to our heroes’ ultimate fate) by singling out the execution scene of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. The former has a look of a man of reason who’s been broken by the illogical; the latter sports the complementary look of a man of whimsy who’s been worn down by niggling reality. Both accept their fate in states of differing exasperation.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: “Heads,” “heads,” “heads”…; am I Rosencrantz or are you Guildenstern?; play within a play within a play within a movie

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Tom Stoppard’s semi-medieval world is one of modern wordplay, post-modern comedy, existentialism, tragedy, and ambiguous identity. As it stands, the movie is perhaps the only example to be found in the “Nihilistic Farce” genre of cinema.


Clip from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

COMMENTS: Sometimes it’s just better to stay home. This lesson is Continue reading 229. ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD (1990)

225. ADAPTATION. (2002)

CHARLIE KAUFMAN: I’ve written myself into my screenplay.

DONALD KAUFMAN: That’s kind of weird, huh?

Adaptation.

Must See

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , Chris Cooper, Brian Cox

PLOT: Screenwriter , fresh off the hit Being John Malkovich, is contractually and mentally trapped as he is forced to plow his way through an impossible project: “writing a movie about flowers.” Things go from bleak to bizarre as he finds himself competing with his endearingly oblivious twin brother, Donald, who also aspires to be a screenwriter. Charlie slips further and further past the deadline, until things come to a head in the film’s swampy denouement where he comes face-to-face with both the writer of and titular character from “The Orchid Thief,” the book he is adapting for the screen.

Still from Adaptation. (2002)

BACKGROUND:

  • The screenplay for Adaptation. was on Charlie Kaufman’s to-do list since the late ’90s. Tasked with adapting Susan Orlean’s novel-length essay “The Orchid Thief” and suffering the same problems as his doppelganger, he kept his progress secret from everyone other than Spike Jonze until 2000, when the movie was green-lit for production.
  • Screenwriting guru Robert McKee and his seminars are real. He personally suggested Brian Cox play him in the movie.
  • Adaptation. handily recouped the producers’ investment, with a return of $32.8 million worldwide on a $19 million outlay.
  • Nominated for four Oscars: best actor for Cage, supporting actor for Cooper, supporting actress for Streep, and adapted screenplay for Charlie and Donald Kaufman. Cooper was the only winner.
  • Though “Donald” Kaufman’s serial killer script The 3 was never shot, the idea may have inspired two subsequent movies, 2003’s Identity and 2006’s Thr3e.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Returning from a misfired date, Charlie finds his twin brother already back home from a writer’s seminar, brimming over with newly adopted wisdom. As Charlie stands in front of his hallway mirror, Donald’s face is captured in the reflection as he expounds upon his own screenplay’s “image system” involving broken mirrors. Charlie’s expression goes from dour to disbelieving at this inanity, and the viewer sees the movie mock both itself and screenplay tricks. A further twist is added by the fact that the blurry reflection in the mirror is the face of the actual Charlie Kaufman talking to Nicolas Cage.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: Film-within-a-film-within-a-screenplay-within-a-screenplay ; Ouroboros; orchid-snorting

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: For all its unconventionality, Adaptation is amazingly self-deprecating. Spoilers unravel in opening scenes and are tossed aside, coastal city elites are presented as real people with the petty little problems real people have, and Nicolas Cage gains a bit of weight and loses a bit of hair to provide the compelling double performance as the Kaufman brothers. Events seem scattershot, only to have their purposes later clarified as the tightly structured flow keeps the viewer jumping from moment to moment, always questioning which parts of this convoluted tale are actually true.

COMMENTS: Between its thorough description of the protagonist Continue reading 225. ADAPTATION. (2002)