The Wife was wary

Of witnessing Dallas Buyer's Club.  And, I can not blame her for having those feelings.  It is the holidays.  We both work in retail, and her job is v stressful, and we do not get a whole lot of time together, just the two of us.  Plus, Dallas Buyer's Club is not by any stretch your typical holiday movie fare.

In addition to her worries about the sadness and "heaviosity" of such a film, I also suspect that she really did not want to see the beautiful Matthew McConaughey portraying a tragic wasting AIDS victim.  Or Jared Leto, for that matter.  I tried to suggest to her that regardless of the sadness and pain displayed, that ultimately this was a really very beautiful story about some frankly heroic people that educated themselves and fought for their survival, and others like them, and for the survival of all the others that would be afflicted long after they had passed away.  

And, even though I never mentioned it to her, it is one of the main points of the film that it was exactly that so many beautiful young men like McConaughey and Leto, who were not movie stars or rock stars, did die in the brutal first waves of this tragic pandemic.  

Yet, as moved as I was by sections and/or moments in Dallas Buyer's Club, it still ultimately fell prey to the problems with biopic filmmaking.  Sometimes the documentary footage is just bound to be more powerful.  Seeing documentary footage of the NAMES Project quilt being displayed on the Washington Mall in 1987, or "reading" the special November 1989 issue of the Bay Area Reporter wherein they provided photographs of all the San Franciscans that had died of AIDS that year, is heartbreakingly a much more potent and poignant experience than seeing Dallas Buyer's Club, for all its merits.

Bay Area Reporter, November 1989.

I had the same issue with Gus Van Sant's very fine film, Milk.  (And, I was extremely pleased to see Sean Penn win Best Actor, too.) But, the finest moment in Van Sant's biopic is the opening credits, which is pre-Stonewall documentary footage of gays being rousted out of gay bars; harassed and beaten.  The rest of the film was never as gripping or important.

Dallas Buyer's Club did do one very important thing, though.  It made Renee want to learn more about the pandemic in real time, so to speak.  She wanted to learn more about the early days of the pandemic and what was actually being done to fight it.

So, I played We Were Here for her last night.  I have already spoke of this masterful documentary in this space before.  Here, and here.  The Wife han't seen it before, so last night was a revelation for her.

Which is what makes Dallas Buyer's Club worth it in the end.  That this film can bring greater awareness and empathy to the awful AIDS pandemic, and tell the stories of the innumerable heroes that struggle every single day to vanquish this wretched blight, well, than that is enough.














All my love,
Michael

We Were Here

Is a simple, yet deeply moving documentary about the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco.  There is no voiceover throughout and there are only around ten or so witnesses that speak to what it was like living through the 80s as panic took hold in the City.

What is remarkable is the strength these folks had to keep on going, watching their friends and lovers die day by day.  One of the witnesses saw his partner die first, his best friend die two days later, and then another friend pass away the next day.

The most affecting moment for me was the part when they show the Bay Area Reporter's obituary section for one year in the 80s.  Instead of reprinting the text from each person who died from AIDS that year for their year-end issue they simply reprinted every photograph of those who had passed.  It goes on for pages and pages.

The miraculous way this community responded and came back to life and to help all those in the City and around the world is a true marvel.  I would like to think if something that tragic happened in my community that I would have the guts and fortitude to act the way those folks did (and still do.)

An absolute must-see, but it is a toughy.  Be prepared to shed tears.

All my love,
Ardent

Renee and I really want to see

The documentary, We Were Here.  The only place it is playing, though, is the Castro Theater.  I do not know if we are man enough to do that.  I will not mind the anger and indignation.  I will join the queens and hoot and holler and boo Reagan, Falwell, Robertson, and the rest of those fucking enemies of love.  With relish.  It is the tears I am wary of.  The entire theater will be infused with such pain, loss, and sorrow.  Still, it is a pain I feel I must confront and absorb.  And I will.

On somewhat the same topic, last night I saw Stonewall Uprising and I have two things to discuss:  first, I did not think the film was v good.  I thought the filmmakers spent too much time setting the "riots" up.  I understand that this was a film that spent some time on The American Experience and had to really really really spell out how awful and suicidal our culture made gays feel prior to Stonewall.  Most straight society in this country even in 2011 have no clue what our gay/lesbian godparents went through.  (Even now, many straights do not get it, still.)  But for the filmmakers to make such an effort to describe the uprising in numerous details, incl using animation, and yet cram all of that in to the last twenty minutes was confusing and frustrating to this viewer.

The other thing I would like to talk about re Stonewall Uprising relates to Gus van Sant's, Milk.  The reason that Milk is ultimately a failure to me, despite its' many virtues, is the opening title sequence.  Van Sant opens his film with documentary footage of gays, hiding their faces, being turned out of gay clubs, arrested, etc, ... And that, for me, was by far, the most moving part of the picture.

Maurice Conchis from Fowles' novel, The Magus, states flatly that he stopped reading fiction ages ago. As awful as Conchis is, I am on the same boat re fiction and non-fiction.  How can van Sant expect us to seriously consider his "story" (based on someone's real life) after submitting us to that kind of poignant, sorrowful, infuriating prologue? Sure, as a Major Hollywood Entertainment it satisfies (and the Oscar for Sean Penn was a swooning plum) but in terms of being a moving, serious statement about an unsung, great American's life it fails.

I am sticking to the Oscar winning documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk (1984).  Seeing the real Diane Fienstein confront the press after the horror is much better than any Hollywood slow motion death scene.

And the good news is that The Times of Harvey Milk will be coming out on blu-ray from Criterion very soon.

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(I know, I know) but I finally saw Grand Illusion.  Jean Renoir may be the finest filmmaker ever.  No one gets at the subtleties and nuances of real human life better than him.  No one else understands how complicated life is and expresses that complexity better on film.  Philosophers are constantly wrestling with paradoxes.  It is their life.  It is what we expect from them and pay them for.  Renoir is the master of negative capability.  (And I am using Keats' definition of the term, which I feel best defines this esoteric, pretentious sensibility.)   He is able to show every side of the story in a refreshing, honest humanistic way that constantly uplifts the spirit and makes one thrilled to be alive.  The most obvious tool he uses to achieve this is his revolutionary use of deep-focus.  But it is those scripts and stories that constantly challenge me politically, make me walk in my enemies' shoes.  And Renoir does it as if I am enjoying a meal at a three star Michelin restaurant.  Genius.  Yet nearly artless.  The true master of panache by Ardent Henry's standard.

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I had the delicious pleasure of enjoying Grand Illusion as part of TCMs 31 Days of Oscar.  I also had the supreme treat of watching Amadeus on the day Renee got the job.  So, even though she thinks Amadeus is an overwrought rococo creation, she was so busy celebrating real-time on her cell that I had the film at my leisure.

I have seen Amadeus innumerable times.  I have always loved it.  I loved it a week ago, too.  The music is first rate, natch.  F Murray Abraham deserved his Oscar.  Tom Hulce is brill.  (What is he doing now?) Cynthia Nixon is so young, so vulnerable.  Simon Callow was such a good sport and is still so good.  The vaudeville scenes are treasures, making an olde theatre boie (like myself) hurt.

But the reason I love this film so much is that like the seminal Masterpiece Theater series, I, Claudius, Amadeus makes you feel as if you were there, that life really has not changed that fucking much in all the years that have passed.  You can take your iPads, iPods, MacMinis, Kabletown, teevees, and all the rest, and really we are all still the same.  We are still hearts beating, arms reaching, theater-going, book-reading, elated, (sometimes) sorrowful souls walking the pavements which have not much changed.  


As wonderful as Amadeus is, my favorite Forman film will always be Loves of a Blonde.  Amadeus was a prodigal son story.  Forman returns to Czechoslovakia and turns Prague in to Vienna.  Loves of a Blonde was shot by the same man as Amadeus.  Loves of a Blonde captures the mittel-european sense of humor better than any film I have seen. (Still fucking waiting for the US release of Cristian Mungiu's, Tales of the Golden Age.) And the  scene where the kids flood the dance hall will live with me forever.  


Loves of a Blonde is like the Stones' song, Factory Girl. But a lot better.  

City boy meets factory girl in Loves of a Blonde

But right around the time I was born (and MLK was assassinated) the Soviet tanks rolled in to Prague and the Czech New Wave was dead.  Forman ran off to New York (good for him) and made films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hair, and Amadeus.  His return to Prague was seen as a major triumph and this was before  Havel's Velvet Revolution.

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There is more to come:  discussions on The Pink Floyd, Giant Sand, and the Wisconsin situation.  I love you all, Mwah!, ...