I was so happy when, right after Christmas eve, I found a director's cut of this on Blu-ray in an old-school video shop in Málaga. And when I watched it this evening, I sat with a smile the whole time. So much energy and joy in its 90s hellscape. I think it foreshadows Aggro Dr1ft!
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Imitation of Life 1959
Ironies upon ironies upon ironies. Tragedies upon tragedies upon tragedies. Harsh satire and loving care in one and the same move. Funny and devastating, and within the cramped spaces of the studio system, it's almost as raw as a Cassavetes. Heartfelt in its artifice and dialectical in its melodrama, it feels like three films in one, at least, but with the integrity of one. A multi-layered masterpiece that only gives and gives.
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The Swedish Theory of Love 2015
Intriguing how a film so insistently critizising individualism and independence (mixing the fight for woman's socio-economic independence of men with the political belief in individualism!) ends up making heroic portraits of individuals. It is quite bizarre, yet revealing of how easy it is to fall into cultural clichés and structural conventions, when a longer segment trying to look at the sense of community in the so-called "Third World" ends up hailing a Westerner and portrays the rest as the "exotic other" (the Westerner, of course, being a doctor helping out the poor).
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Something to Remind Me 2001
When the most conventional of all shot/reverse shots becomes a commonsensical mystery (and not a technical, convenient solution), that's when you know you see a Petzold film. In Petzold, a shot/reverse shot is never a shot/reverse shot, even though it's a perfectly traditional shot/reverse shot - it is something of a miracle. A miracle of connection or disconnection, knowing no boundaries, no frames, just the soul of moments. An unruly diciple of Hitchcock, where the "the boring parts" are contained, developed and treasured!
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