All My Friends: Millennium Mambo, Take 5: Nathan E. House

A mutual love of Lynne Ramsay and French chanson (combined with a fairly intense disdain for the shitty company we were working for) solidified my friendship with Nathan House. After we parted ways with said shitty employer, we would often find ourselves crossing paths in not-so-unexpected situations (lately: a screening of Made in USA, the St. Vincent concert and a bitter cold house party). You can check out a couple of Nathan's video projects on The Auteurs. Thanks, Nathan.

On Film: All i can say for my turn-of-the-century film list is i picked my favorites, not the best, just the ones i plan to revisit again & again.

L'intrus (Claire Denis, 2004) ~ The phrase 'hauntingly poetic' gets used far too often. After Joe recommended Betty Blue, I did a library search for Béatrice Dalle, the only other film of hers they had was L'intrus. This was my first entry into the world of Claire Denis, & it caught me wildly off guard. I was lulled & hypnotized. I'm sure Beau travail may be her 'best', but L'intrus will always be closest to my heart.

Vicky Christina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008) ~ The best narrative dramatic-comedy-romance Woody has offered us since Husbands & Wives. A stunning screenplay. Vicky Christina Barcelona is a mine-field of diamonds. Beautiful, rare gems exploding everywhere, at the slightest touch of love.

Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000) ~ As a Björk fan, this was my first serving of Von Trier. I still tear up at the 'Next to Last Song', no matter what. The master of cinematic manipulation does it again.

Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont, 2003) ~ This film destroyed me. Utterly unaware of its contents, my jaw hung agape at its audacity. I was mortified; couldn’t get it out of my head for days; still thought about it on a regular basis weeks/months later. A serious challenge; a powerful film.

Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004) ~ The phrase 'hauntingly poetic' gets used far too often.
Never has a tail been used with greater effect.

The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005) ~ The phrase 'hauntingly poetic' gets used far too often.
POCAHONTAS, LEARNING ENGLISH, SPINNING AROUND: "Wind! Wind! Wind!"

Waking Life (Richard Linklater, 2001) ~ I used to watch this everynight before bed; i think it accounts for the wild dreams I've had in my twenties. That, & legal Native American drugs.

V for Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2005) ~ On a whim I wandered into a movie theatre at 9pm to find out the foreign film i wanted to see didn't start 'til 11. So i moseyed into this after seeing a cardboard advertisement donning Natalie Portman's sexy bald-head. Long-story short, I was enthralled, love its anti-establishment sentiment & ended up liking it better than the foreign film i had originally wanted to see. I love a film about 'the power of ideas'.

Transformers (Michael Bay, 2007) ~ Quality escapist entertainment & funtastic directorial orchestration.
KID ON CELLPHONE RUNNING THROUGH DEMOLISHED STREET: "This is easily a thousand times cooler than Armageddon!!"

Up (Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, 2009) ~ Brilliant comedy. I’ve such a deep admiration for innocent comedy. Comedy that needs no shock-value, degradation/sadism, or subversive ‘adult’ jokes thrown-in. There are so many irreproachably clever jokes along this adventure. A beautifully funny film.


On Music: For this list of my turn-of-the-century favorites, I've decided to single out the artists that I hold closest, & go double-time as I refuse to hold any one of their albums above another.

The Books ~ Thought for Food (2002)
The Books ~ Lemon of Pink (2003)

Erykah Badu ~ Mama's Gun (2000)
Erykah Badu ~ Worldwide Underground (2003)
Erykah Badu ~ New Amerykah: 4th World War (2008)

Parenthetical Girls ~ Safe as Houses (2006)
Parenthetical Girls ~ Entanglements (2008)

Camille ~ Le fil (2005)
Camille ~ Music Hole (2008)

Beirut ~ Gulag Orkestrar (2006)
Beirut ~ Flying Club Cup (2007)

Björk ~ Selmasongs (2000)
Björk ~ Vespertine (2001)

Funky 16 Corners ~ Funky 16 Corners (2001)

Lonely Island ~ Incredibad (2009)

Rifle Recoil ~ Rifle Recoil (2009)

Prince ~ Musicology (2004)
Prince ~ 3121 (2006)

Millennium Mambo, Part 3

More on the Best of the Decade list round-up from Mike D'Angelo and the Skandies, which was actually posted earlier this month (and which I thought I had already mentioned, but... I guess not) and from Glenn Kenny. D'Angelo and the Skandies listed 20 films and 20 performances, with Lars von Trier's Dogville and Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood topping the respective lists. First, the films:

01. Dogville, 2003, d. Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden/UK/France/Germany/Norway/Finland/Netherlands, Lionsgate
02. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004, d. Michel Gondry, USA, Focus Features
03. In the Mood for Love, 2000, d. Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/China/France, USA Films/Criterion
04. Mulholland Drive, 2001, d. David Lynch, USA/France, Universal Studios
05. There Will Be Blood, 2007, d. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, Paramount Vantage/Miramax
06. The New World, 2005, d. Terrence Malick, USA/UK, New Line
07. Memento, 2000, d. Christopher Nolan, USA, Newmarket Films
08. 25th Hour, 2002, d. Spike Lee, USA, Touchstone
09. Yi yi: A One and Two, 2000, d. Edward Yang, Taiwan/Japan, Fox Lorber/Criterion
10. No Country for Old Men, 2007, d. Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, USA, Paramount Vantage/Miramax
11. Before Sunset, 2004, d. Richard Linklater, USA, Warner Independent
12. Silent Light [Stellet licht], 2007, d. Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Netherlands/Germany, Palisades Tartan
13. Kill Bill, Volume 1, 2003, d. Quentin Tarantino, USA, Miramax
14. Werckmeister Harmonies [Werckmeister harmóniák], 2000, d. Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, Hungary/Italy/Germany/France, Facets
15. Irréversible, 2002, d. Gaspar Noé, France, Lionsgate
16. Zodiac, 2007, d. David Fincher, USA, Paramount
17. Ghost World, 2001, d. Terry Zwigoff, USA/UK/Germany, United Artists
18. The Man Who Wasn't There, 2001, d. Joel Coen, USA/UK, USA Films
19. Trouble Every Day, 2001, d. Claire Denis, France/Germany/Japan, Lot 47 Films
20. Gerry, 2002, d. Gus Van Sant, USA, Miramax

And the performances...

01. Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
02. Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
03. Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive
04. Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake
05. Isabelle Huppert, The Piano Teacher [La pianiste]
06. Summer Phoenix, Esther Kahn
07. Björk, Dancer in the Dark
08. Laura Dern, Inland Empire
09. Mathieu Amalric, Kings and Queen [Rois et reine]
10. Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York
11. Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
12. Christian Bale, American Psycho
13. Billy Bob Thornton, The Man Who Wasn't There
14. Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
15. Laura Linney, You Can Count on Me
16. Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
17. Q'orianka Kilcher, The New World
18. Julianne Moore, Far from Heaven
19. Peter Sarsgaard, Shattered Glass
20. Aurélien Recoing, Time Out [L'emploi du temps]

I don't have much to say about either list, aside from... Summer Phoenix? Really? Above Björk? Well, not just above Björk, but on the list altogether. I remember her lead performance in Arnaud Desplechin's English-language Esther Kahn to lack quite a bit. I'm still planning on revisiting that one before the year ends, so I'll let you know then. And I've complained enough about Ghost World; unless it starts showing up a lot more often, I'm keeping mum.

Glenn Kenny's list covers his "Seventy Greatest Films of the Decade," in alphabetical order from A.I. to Zodiac. Of the nice surprises on the list: Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl, Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience (which I don't think was a bit of personal bias, despite the fact that he played one of Sasha Grey's johns), Azazel Jacobs' The GoodTimesKid, Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman, Brad Bird's The Incredibles, Clint Eastwood's Invictus (which he can't talk about yet... but this inclusion isn't stirring any interest in me as Gran Torino is also on his list), Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar, Jacques Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais, Hong Sang-soo's Night and Day, Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours and Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. I spotted a few other Best of the Decade lists floating around, but most of them were deplorable, so I'm not going to waste posting/linking to them.

I also meant to thank Eric over at IonCinema for first directing me toward the TIFF list I posted yesterday, and please do check out out Blake Williams' blog, who also included TIFF's picks for the 1990s, which was topped with Víctor Erice's The Dream of Life [El sol del membrillo], still without a DVD release in the US, and included my favorite first-time viewing of a not-2000-era film in 2009, Olivier Assayas' L'eau froide. Thanks guys. Now, on to some writing of my own...

Vice Magazine interviews Lars von Trier

Leave it to Vice to conduct my favorite interview thusfar with our old pal Lars von Trier. Henrik Saltzstein gets some great shit out of LvT: complications with Willem Dafoe's dick double, pill-popping, Björk writing a letter to Nicole Kidman telling her not to do Dogville, gardening and the woes of having liberal parents. For more fun, check out the rest of Vice's Film Issue, with a cover by Christopher Doyle and interviews with Werner Herzog, Spike Jonze, the Kuchar brothers, Doyle, Anthony Dod Mantle, Ross McElwee, Gaspar Noé, Dario Argento, Jack Bond, Terry Gilliam, Les Blank and a photospread of Natasha Lyonne (??) by Richard Kern (!!).

The Decade List: Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Dancer in the Dark - dir. Lars von Trier

Though I've always argued the case against describing Catherine Breillat as a "provocateuse," I'd be fooling myself to do the same with Lars von Trier. For the past eight or so years, I've grappled with the notion of Dancer in the Dark as an elaborate snuff film or the blackest comedy you've ever seen. It's as emotionally and narratively manipulative as a film can get, with very little remorse in being so. Never before had I seen a film with so much disdain for its audience, and I couldn't help but feel shat upon, seeing all the people around me bursting into tears and feeling as if my stomach had been ripped into shreds. Seeing and feeling such things was, frankly, embarrassing, and for that, I despised Von Trier. Tremendously.

This hatred would subside four years later, though perhaps out of some fear of rekindling those feelings of embarrassment, it wouldn't be until last night that I would return to Dancer in the Dark. From its first moments following the overture, as Selma Ježková (Björk) rehearses for her role as Maria in a production of The Sound of Music, the entire film came swirling back to me, without the varying layers of defense and condemnation I'd been placing upon it for years. Dancer in the Dark became something entirely different in my head, but during those first moments, it was clear that I'd never really forgotten Dancer in the Dark, the film, the same way most people have never really forgotten The Sound of Music.

With numerous reports of spats on the set of the film, one can't help but wonder if von Trier was consciously turning Dancer in the Dark into his own personal Passion of Joan of Arc; he's been quoted as being a huge admirer of co-patriot Carl Theodor Dreyer. In Dancer in the Dark, Selma is von Trier's own Joan of Arc, and Björk, who swore off acting after making the film, is his Maria Falconetti, cinematically immortalized (Björk would later star in husband Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, though her appearance wouldn't be considered "acting" by any traditional definition). Björk's performance is truly marvelous. It's a thing of uncomfortable privacy, so excruciatingly vulnerable you're almost ashamed to be watching it. The experience of watching her becomes visually exemplified during the scene where Bill (David Morse) exploits Selma's blindness by pretending to leave her trailer and discovering the hiding spot for her money. The overwhelming guilt that arises in Bill, after stealing the money, can be felt within the spectator as it becomes less clear whether it's really Selma's tears, and not Björk's, streaming down her face.

Whether you prefer the term meta-musical or anti-musical, von Trier's approach to the musical is where his brutality can be best defended. "I used to dream I was in a musical, because in a musical, nothing dreadful ever happens," Selma tells the sympathetic prison guard (Siobhan Fallon); though it's never actually mentioned, one would have to imagine Selma named her son (Vladica Kostic) after Gene Kelly. Her love of musicals provides the imagined, visualized escape from Selma's harsh reality as von Trier constructs Dancer in the Dark as a musical negatively exposed, in which everything dreadful happens. The emotional and narrative manipulation he creates becomes less an act of a sadism than of faithfulness in invoking what would have to be the inverse of escapism.

Though he never grants his audience it, von Trier utilizes the idea of the musical as the highest form of cinematic escapism almost as a condolence to Selma/Björk. For Björk, the musical numbers, which don't begin until nearly forty minutes into the film, place her in the familiar, the home from which she came. Whether singing to Cathy (Catherine Deneuve), or Cvalda as Selma calls her, in the factory or dancing next to a moving train with Jeff (Peter Stormare), von Trier allows Björk to return to her element, away from the taxation and foreignness of acting. For Selma, the visual manifestation of her Busby Berkeley dreams yields the sympathetic relief she's never given in her own "reality." The dreams transform machinery into a symphony, the assembly line into a chorus line and turn poverty into beauty. By allowing there to always be someone to catch Selma when she falls during her dreams, von Trier bestows the compassion so many people claim he lacks onto Selma. Within these musical dreams, which transpire the same way the film's "reality" does, Selma/Björk can physically and metaphorically leave the film after singing the next-to-last song, the same point Selma would make her exit when seeing a musical in the theatre. The "film" is therefore allowed to "go on forever" for Selma, and for Björk, she can then be replaced by lifelike set piece that hangs from the noose as the camera goes "out of the roof" to Dancer in the Dark's end.

The suggestion that Dancer in the Dark exposes some compassion beneath von Trier's misanthropy (which, also, if often confused with misogyny) can be largely attributed to Björk. Dancer in the Dark is such a divisive film that the arguments I make for von Trier's compassion could be easily argued as being just the opposite, a simple, and very cruel, irony. However, Björk's performance is so transcendent that it allows that illusion to endure. Then again, maybe the strength of her performance serves as the punch line of a malevolent joke. But, I suppose, what is cinema if not the greatest durable illusion?

With: Björk, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare, Željko Ivanek, Cara Seymour, Vladica Kostic, Jean-Marc Barr, Vincent Paterson, Siobhan Fallon, Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård, Joel Grey
Screenplay: Lars von Trier
Cinematography: Robby Müller
Music: Björk
Country of Origin: Denmark/Netherlands/Germany/France/USA/UK/Sweden/Finland/Iceland/Norway
US Distributor: Fine Line Features/New Line

Premiere: 17 May 2000 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 22 September 2000 (New York Film Festival)

Awards: Palme d'Or, Best Actress - Björk (Cannes); Best Film, Best Actress - Björk (European Film Awards); Best Foreign Film (Independent Spirit Awards); Best Foreign Film (Goya Awards, Spain)