Tag Archives: Time

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH (2007)

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DIRECTED BY: Francis Ford Coppola

FEATURING: Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, André M. Hennicke, Alexandra Pirici

PLOT: In 1938 Bucharest, 70-year-old Dominic Matei is struck by lightning, becomes decades younger and develops psychic powers.

Still from Youth without Youth (2007)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Every now and then, Francis Ford Coppola gets to make a movie his way, unconstrained by the demands of capitalism or the limitations of collaboration. Think of the studio-destroying One From the Heart, the self-indulgently autobiographical Tucker: The Man and His Dream, or the demented epic Apocalypse Now. With big ideas, gloriously pretentious dialogue, radical shifts in tone, and a determination to Speak His Truth, Youth Without Youth is cut from a similar cloth: pure Coppola, raw and unfiltered.

COMMENTS: Francis Ford Coppola is currently in post-production on what he says will be the capstone to his career, a final epic called Megalopolis. He has cashed in his winemaking fortune to produce the film with a nine-figure budget and own it outright. He enlisted an all-star cast to bring his script, which has been camera-ready for years, to life. Beyond the vaguest of plot descriptions, little is yet known about the work that could be the great filmmaker’s final cinematic statement. But I have some suspicions about what to expect from Megalopolis. Because, you see, I’ve watched Youth Without Youth.

After the old-style credits with sweeping theme, we meet Dominic, who is old, hopeless, and suicidal. His book about the origin of human language will never be finished, his dreams are plagued by memories of Laura, the woman who pushed him away because he gave more attention to his intellectual passions than to her, and the world is rushing towards cataclysm. It’s pure happenstance that a final trip back to Bucharest leads to his fateful encounter with a bolt of lightning. (Some wild dialogue suggests divine intervention, but Coppola’s not down for anything as mundane as that.)

Once he’s hospitalized, it takes a while to get back to Dominic, because the movie is intensely interested in the accident itself: the strange process of re-growth, complete with new teeth. The snarky hospital attendants. The tedium of confirming his true identity and crafting a new one. That’s part of Youth Without Youth’s methodology. It’s not metaphorical, symbolic, or satirical. Coppola really is interested in the fundamentals of what would happen to this guy who was hit by lightning and made 30 years younger.

Roughly halfway through the film, Youth Without Youth begins to resemble nothing so much as a superhero origin story, with Dominic using his powers to escape the Nazis’ designs on the ability to extend life. It’s almost comically literal; we suspect a woman staying at the clinic might have ulterior motives once we see that she has a Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH (2007)

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: MOMO (1986)

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DIRECTED BY: Johannes Schaaf

FEATURING: Radost Bokel, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Leopoldo Trieste, Mario Adorf, Bruno Stori, John Huston

PLOT: The residents of a small town adopt Momo, a young girl found living in a cave, embracing her unusual ability to focus their minds; when the Grey Gentlemen arrive to steal the community’s time and put it on a course to unfettered production, Momo must work with the Master of Time to defeat them.

Still from Momo (1986)

COMMENTS: The lovable moppet is a hallmark of storytelling. From Little Orphan Annie to Pippi Longstocking, we’ve got a thing for a girl with wild hair, wide-eyed optimism, and a knack for outwitting stuffy authorities. Based on those criteria, Momo is a worthy addition to their ranks. Radost Bokel looks perfect in the role, with her beaming eyes and radiant smile. It’s not hard to see why the townspeople are immediately drawn to her.

On the other hand, maybe she’s no great shakes, because these residents seem to be a pretty malleable lot. When the first of the Grey Gentlemen shows up at the barber shop to explain at length how time enjoyed is time wasted, the barber’s immediate buy-in suggests they’ve lucked into a particularly uncritical subject. But before long, everyone else has fallen under their sway, with a quick end to leisurely lunches at the local cafe, impromptu concerts by the neighborhood busker, and kids role-playing epic sea battles. It seems that only Momo could possibly turn things around.

This turns out to be true, but it’s not an especially dramatic standoff. Momo frustrates expectations by delivering so much of its conflict as exposition, rather than showing the tension at play. When one of the Gentlemen tries to buy Momo off with an increasing number of dolls, there’s never a moment’s hesitation as to whether she will be seduced by the crass commercial product; she just doesn’t like the dolls. We never see troubadour Gigi fall prey to the lure of fame; he just ends up there, and there’s not much to suggest he sees his own fate as tied up with that of the girl he lamely tries to save. And so it goes. The film has some extraordinary sets and settings, but so many of the critical twists and turns in the plot happen somewhere that we’re not looking.

The reason seems to lie at the feet of Michael Ende, who adapted the screenplay from his own novel. (He also cameos in the movie’s opening minutes as the train passenger who “has plenty of time.”) Ende’s hands-on participation was due in no small part to his experience with The Neverending Story, a previous adaptation where he had little say and despised the end product. If Ende was happier with Momo, it’s probably because it has a very literary feel, dispensing with gaudy special effects and unfolding in scenes that feel like chapters. There is magic at play here, but no glitter and spark. Ende asks viewers to trust that there’s something special about Momo without the need to manufacture wonder. And that’s very mature and respectful, but the result is a movie that feels very much like… a book.

The most magical thing in the film turns out to be John Huston. In his last big screen appearance, the legendary actor/director turns on all the charm, going for maximum twinkle-in-the-eye warmth as he guides Momo through his realm. Even as he’s called upon to provide much of the explanation for what’s going on – he also serves as narrator – he carries an elegaic air that lends enormous power to the film. If Ende’s pages depict a tired but sage overseer of time, Huston is unquestionably what he had in mind. Appropriate that the only person able to slip free of Momo’s limitations is a great filmmaker himself.

Momo is a serviceable fable, with a valuable message about the corrupting influences of ambition, capitalism, and adulthood. But it’s dry and lacking in color, skeptical of the trappings of a fairy tale even as it relies upon them. The film ends with Momo and the townspeople in a raucous celebration, and it’s the most anyone has committed to anything in the film. Better to stick with John Huston and his precocious turtle. They really believe in something.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…visually one sometimes believes one has been transported to a German silent film… it sometimes comes across as too episodic.”– Evil Ed (translated from German)

(This movie was nominated for review by Morgan, who used reverse psychology by suggesting ” don’t even think about adding Momo [1986] onto that list.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

LIST CANDIDATE: THE ENDLESS (2017)

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: ,

FEATURING: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead, Callie Hernandez, Tate Ellington, Lew Temple

PLOT: Brothers who escaped a cult a decade ago receive a videocassette with a strange message and return to their old compound, where it becomes clear that behind the friendly facade of their erstwhile “family” lurks a hazard beyond contemplation.

Still from The Endless (2017)

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LISTThe Endless starts out a little creepy, with altogether too-friendly cult members interacting with the two runaways that defamed their group, before evolving into something skin-crawlingly foreboding. An unnamed, immaterial, but ever-present Entity generates a recurring circumstance found throughout Arcadia Park that puts a new spin on the idea of being “lost in time.”

COMMENTS: A moral found in The Endless is well reflected by the filmmaker’s methods: keep moving. Acting as a veritable two-man band, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead do virtually all the heavy lifting in this science fiction(ish)/horror(ish) drama (no “ish”): they direct, star, write, and do the cinematography. They also reach back and pull their previous features (Resolution and Spring) forward along with them in subtle ways. Paradoxically combining pinpoint focus with immense scope, Benson and Moorhead squeeze an infinity into one story comprised of, for lack of a better phrase, many narrative wheels.

An opening montage introduces us to Justin and Aaron Smith (Benson and Moorhead), two brothers barely making ends meet by doing dead-end work, in desperate need of a new car battery. Their rut is interrupted by a parcel containing a camcorder videotape with a message from their past. The “alien death cult” they escaped apparently didn’t pull the trigger. Their visit to their old digs at Arcadia Park starts well enough, but unnerving details begin to accumulate: multiple moons in the sky, hazy atmospheric barrier walls, and ominous rock pillars scattered not-so-randomly around the camp. As Aaron becomes more enamored with cult life, Justin’s aversion spikes. Diving to the base of a buoy in the camp’s lake, he finds two things underwater: another camcorder cassette, and something unimaginably horrific that he barely escapes. Despite this, Aaron decides to stay. As Justin begins his journey home, he stumbles across the true nature of the problem at Arcadia Park, and returns to save his brother.

One could use any number of adjectives to describe how wonderful this movie is—gripping, mysterious, surprising, funny. I’m handicapped because were I to provide any more details, the film’s twists would be revealed. Suffice it to say, temporal manipulation plays heavily in The Endless; the title itself, perhaps, provides a clue. Arcadia Park’s citizenry do not seem to have aged much since the brothers’ departure. Is it merely healthy country living? There’s a heavily locked cabin under the watchful eye of an Arcadian elder. Does it contain guns, or something far more troubling? And as for that mental patient who wandered on to the cult’s grounds, how real are her charcoal drawings of a monstrous nebula looming over the camp? Unfortunately, I can only pose questions to make hints. Surprise is key.

At its screening at the Fantasia Film Festival, there was a point where every audience member was dead-silent, and I’m convinced we were all holding our breath at the same time. Throughout the bizarre adventure of Justin and Aaron, there is a delicate balance of mundane, humorous, and menacing—with a palpable shift toward the latter as the movie progresses. The film’s world and people are self-contained (in more ways than one), and no line is out of place or without purpose. And then there’s the moral to The Endless, as I said before: keep moving. I’d suggest there is also a second moral here: never put off replacing a car battery.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…The Endless rapidly develops from a mysterious, elliptical story about cult survivors and strained relationships into a much larger and stranger movie…”–Tasha Robinson, The Verge (festival screening)

271. THE HOURGLASS SANATORIUM (1973)

Sanatorium pod Klepsydra; AKA The Sandglass

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. “–Hamlet, Act III, Sc. 1

Recommended

Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING:

PLOT: As the film opens, Józef is on a train headed to a sanatorium where his dead father is being kept. When he arrives, the grounds are deserted and decrepit, but eventually he finds a doctor who leads him to his now-sleeping father’s room and explains the patient’s comatose-but-alive status: “the trick is that we moved back time… we reactivate past time with all its possibilities.” Józef then wanders through the sanatorium’s grounds, meeting his mother, a collector of automatons, a parade of men dressed in bird costumes, the Three Wise Men, and other strange characters.

Still from The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973)

BACKGROUND:

  • The film was primarily based on Polish Surrealist author Bruno Schultz’s short-story collection “Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass,” although it included ideas from some of the author’s other short stories. (A Schulz story was also the inspiration for the ‘ stop-animation nightmare “The Street of Crocodiles“).
  • Wojciech Has worked on this project for five years.
  • The Hourglass Sanatorium did not receive the blessing of the Polish censors and was banned. Has had copies smuggled to the Cannes Film Festival, where it tied for the jury prize (at that time, essentially third place). In apparent retaliation for his insubordination, the Communist Party did not approve any of Has’ new film projects for the next ten years.
  • In Poland, an hourglass is a symbol of death.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Oddly enough, especially given how visually sumptuous The Hourglass Sanatorium is, the image which best evokes the movie isn’t even in it. I speak of the famous theatrical release poster by Polish artist Franciszek Starowieyski, which depicts a giant orange eyeball perched on a jawbone, with a grill of teeth through which a worm crawls (a limbless woman’s torso is also stuck between its molars), while numbers and arrows illustrate features of bone anatomy like occult footnotes. The poster seizes upon the film’s major theme of death; Starowieyski was also picking up on the repeated motif of eyeballs which occurs throughout the Sanatorium, from the train conductor’s blind stare to the cobweb-covered eyeball collection Józef finds under the bed. To illustrate the film, we ultimately chose the image of a toppled wax automaton with his eye-socket popped open to reveal the gears inside—but when I think of The Hourglass Sanatorium, I always think of that poster first.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: Crow frozen in flight; Józef spying on Józef; eyeballs under the bed

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The Hourglass Sanatorium is a rare work of genuine Surrealism. Seldom has any film ever captured the free-falling feeling of being lost in a dream so well: the portentous but inexplicable visions; the tenuous, tantalizing connections between ideas; the smooth and continuous shifting of realities. Let a blind conductor be your guide inside a crumbling hospital whose rooms hold wonder after wonder.


Brief clip from The Hourglass Sanatorium

COMMENTS: Sanatorium pod Klepsydra opens on the silhouette of a Continue reading 271. THE HOURGLASS SANATORIUM (1973)

CAPSULE: THE END OF TIME (2012)

DIRECTED BY: Peter Mettler

FEATURING: Peter Mettler (narration)

PLOT: Documentarian Peter Mettler interviews people from various walks of life about their thoughts on time, using poetic footage of lava flows, particle accelerators, and digital mandalas as visual backgrounds.

Still from The End of Time (2012)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While The End of Time is way, way outside the average filmgoer’s wheelhouse, despite a few acid flashback moments, it’s not really weird per se. It is also somewhat overshadowed by similar visionary non-narrative documentaries like Samsara and the Koyaanisqatsi trilogy, more expensive productions that achieve more spectacular vistas.

COMMENTS: The subjects of The End of Time include a 1960 record-setting skydiving free-fall from over 100,000 above the earth, lava flows on a volcanic island, and a squadron of ants bearing away a grasshopper’s corpse. None of this has much to do in particular with time, and yet it all does, because time is inescapable (despite the documentary’s occasional implication that time is an illusion). Rather than talking about time per se, the narration begins with the words “in the beginning there were no names,” and as the movie slowly flows and curls about like magma it returns periodically to what appears to be that central point: ultimate reality is inexpressible, and language (and abstract concepts like “time”) are our feeble (and possibly counterproductive) attempts to freeze and analyze the endless flux of reality. At least, that’s my view of Mettler’s position; the documentary is ostensibly time-neutral, giving equal weight to all experiences. Speakers are never identified by name or credentialed, and so the doc gives the same weight to the particle physicist’s opinions as those of the guru, the hermit, the artist colony potter, and a woman I’m guessing is the director’s grandma. Some of the earnestly proffered opinions, particularly the New Age-y ruminations from the granola crowd, are easy to mock, but please resist the urge. It is so rare for people to actually discuss grand, abstract concepts in movies in an irony-free way that it’s incredibly refreshing, and I’d hate to discourage future explorers from setting out towards similar territory.

Philosophy aside, the cinematography (by Mettler, Camille Budin, and Nick de Pencier) makes End of Time worth your time. Mettler draws visual parallels between the circular construction of particle accelerators and Hindu mandalas, between a corpse carried on a funeral bier and a meal carried away by ants. In between monologues Mettler throws in pastoral passages of eye poetry: stars dissolve into snowflakes, and we see a cat in a field quietly perceiving time in his own way, then camera draws back to show the same footage on a big screen television in an editing studio. The most remarkable scenes are the mesmerizing flows of magma from an active volcano; it’s amazing how quickly the outside edges cool to a black crust while the inside still glows red hot, and the entire mass creeps along, knocking down trees and incinerating the ferns that grew up since the earth’s mantle last leaked to the surface. The final act is a lysergic digital freakout presumably representing “the end of time,” beginning with the extinction of the sun, which turns into a bunch of glowing green mandalas and segues into a cosmic Malickian montage. The overall result—abstract and meandering, sometimes deep, sometimes pretentious, beautiful but frequently slow as molasses—is definitely not for all tastes. At times the movie gets a little too trippy-hippy-dippy for its own good, leaning too far to the “far out, man” end of the profundity spectrum. But you have to give Mettler much credit for his courage in thinking big and tackling deep questions that would terrify less ambitious filmmakers.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“There’s a touch of the acid mindset here, certainly: towards the end, many of Mettler’s images come together in an abstract montaged freak-out that might have made a very effective credits sequence, but feels too trippily ‘heyy-wowww’ when incorporated into the main body of the film. At moments, The End of Time come perilously close to a tone of nebulous new-age amazement, a touch too Koyaanisqatsian for comfort.”–Johnathan Romney, Film Comment