David Fincher. Mank.

David Fincher proved that he can create masterpieces ("A Curious Case of Benjamin Button") but also that he has problems with the pace of his movies. All substantial dialogues happen in the last 13 minutes of his movie, and the rest, in which he intended to imitate Orson Welles' style is incomprehensible. I spent 3/4 of the length of the movie by hysterically googling the characters and trying to understand why they are there in the shot. My experience was not helped by the fact that the actors playing Joseph Louis Mayer and Irving Thalberg looked almost identical. Was Fincher implying that Irving Thalberg was the son figure for L. B. Mayer before his own son could take the reins? If yes, the hint can be understood only by Welles' buffs. As I already mentioned, a director must not be in love with his characters, otherwise they take over him. 

Les Notres.

Impeccably directed and acted movie--at some point I became afraid of the teenage girl having to act a role with some shots borderline to a child pornography--but, unlike much more nuanced Bad Tales, it is sociologically and psychologically unsatisfying. Of course, I wished for a happy ending, if only for the vindication of Emilie Bierre's and Marianne Farley's indomitable heroines, but suicide would also be explainable. 

Whether provincial Quebec is in such a medieval state of consciousness that the null hypothesis in the case of a pregnant 13-year old girl, refusing to disclose who impregnated her, would not be that she was raped and that the rapist is threatening her or her family and not being investigated by police? Why loving and caring mother inexplicably refuses to go to the police and/or district attorney's office and leaves the whole case in care of a bumbling social worker doubling as a local DJ? That a local mayor, the rapist, is so powerful that he can assure silence of an entire town is perfectly believable--in the US leaders of religious sects sometimes control and intimidate the entire counties--but that mother is barely interested in uncovering the whole story and easily subscribes to the cockamamy suggestion that the mayor's adopted son is a culprit?  That the mayor's childless wife does not notice his interest in underage girls and that mother of a victim and her best friend never communicate on that issue throughout all the rapturous event? If the director Jeanne Leblanc wanted to demonstrate that even well-intentioned people easily fall to the simplest and most convincing (or the least traumatic) version of events, she achieved that purpose. But that purpose is outside of cinematic story she so masterfully displayed.  

Bad Tales (Favolacce)

American film buffs who criticize the movie as "disorganized" and "illogical" simply don't understand cinematic art. It is superbly organized to imitate the boredom of low-to-middle class suburbia populated by the Italian red necks as the murderous swamp. Its immutable logic leads to attempts at murder and, finally, collective suicide. 

The ensemble--mostly consisting of kids--plays superbly. Not a single mediocre acting job, and Ileana d'Ambri in a role of mildly retarded soup kitcheness, and Elio Germano in a role of a red neck factory supervisor--stupid, brutish--but loving and caring husband and father are shining. Ileana d'Ambri even may in future substitute Anna Magnani as a neorealist heroine for the XXI century. 

This is also stumbling American critical multiverse--the absence of obvious heroes and villains--just the people with their big anxieties and small victories. 

The Italian cinema is back after a long hiatus following murder of Pasolini, slow journey of Michelangelo Antonioni into the night, and the death of Fellini! 

Enfant Terrible.

The Oscar Roehler movie depicts R. W. Fassbinder practically as a cult leader, abusing, psychologically, physically and sexually his group of devotees. I watched it expecting the story of his trouble with anti-Semitic theater performance, which was completely glossed over by Roehler: "Cologne Jewish community protesting, after which the show was canceled" appears as an afterthought during a drink. Also, his heterosexual side was made completely sterile at the expense of his numerous (and abusive) homosexual affairs. But suave Andy Warhol appearing in MOMA episode with Fassbinder destroyed the lives of everybody he touched. Violently rude Fassbinder elevated most of his collaborators into the stars of the German cinema and theater. 

Roy Andersson. On Endlessness.

 

An apocalyptic view (with "I saw" refrain) of sterile prison landscape of modern Sweden and, sometimes, 1945 Germany, in a color scheme of a postmodernist office space--pink-beige and 50 shades of grey. Somebody's absurdist idea of hell as an endless boredom. 

Mare. HBO.

            The fact that, judging by her interviews, a ridiculously self-centered, upper middle class British airhead can produce and credibly play a strong, troubled woman from rural Pennsylvania is remarkable by itself. Unlike other modern fare, e.g. "Nevers", the plot is well constructed and logical. 🥀🥀🥀

Lodz

 Somber part-documentary elegy of the pre-war and post-war Jewish life in Lodz.