So it’s occurred to me that I haven’t been doing a great job of keeping everyone regularly appraised of my movie watching progress. In the interest of greater transparency and also obligating myself to write posts more regularly, I think I’m going to start writing posts at the beginning of each month which include my net progress toward my 52 movie goal.
Thus far, 2011’s Movies Watched This Year List includes:
1. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (3)
2. I'm Still Here (2)
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (4)
4. The Fighter (4)
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (5)
6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (4)
7. Barney's Version (4)
8. The White Ribbon (5)
Please note, per my last post, the ridiculous preponderance of Harry Potter movies. I’d be embarrassed if I weren’t still so deeply in the throes of my newfound fandom. Holy shit those movies are fun!
But that’s as far as our Boy Wizard discussion will go for today, I’m afraid. On to brighter and lighter things. On to pre-World War I rural Germany.
Oh yes, what a party the people of that time and place were.
With Netflix’s recommendation, I recently watched “The White Ribbon” (2009), winner of the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film and Best Cinematography that year. I hadn’t really heard of it and am generally not drawn to German movies. I lean more toward Swedes when I’m wanting to watch movies about cold blond people, partly out of ancestral deference, but also the fact that Ingmar Bergman was a god among men. However, I’m very glad to have made the exception in this case. “The White Ribbon” is nothing short of mesmerizing.
To start, the award for Best Cinematography is well-deserved. The crisp, stark, haunting images of the film wield surprising power for what is, at the end of the day, a rather quietly brooding film. Plenty of disturbing events take place over the course of the movie, but we only ever learn of each of them after the fact, in brief glimpses and through subtle admissions of dark acts. Shot in black and white, the movie achieves a sense of authenticity that immerses the viewer in the lives people led a century ago—their manner of dress, the frigid fastidiousness of their housekeeping, their stoic demeanors and stilted interactions. I found myself wondering what their homes smelled like, how their coffee tasted, and how heavy the women’s dresses felt, giving the story a rare sense of proximity. Underpinning this intimacy is a bold stillness in the camerawork, which refuses to move to follow the characters but rather allows them to approach at their own pace, creating a sense of tense contemplation.
It doesn’t seem to be much in vogue, but I find this school of cinematography immensely appealing—and not just because I’ve been literally nauseated by herky-jerky “Blair Witch Project” (1999)-style shooting on a number of occasions (see also: why I walked out of “Hancock” (2008)—also because it was terrible*). I get that a lot of natural movement in filming is its own kind of vérité, an underpolished, messy approach to filmmaking that can be really brilliant in the right hands (see also: the French New Wave), but it can also be immensely distracting. When done poorly, it merely serves to remind the audience that a person is filming this. You are watching a movie. In case you forgot, I’m going to move the camera around a lot. Do you remember now?
It’s annoying.
On the other hand, intelligently and calculatedly placing a camera and simply letting it run as events swirl around it allows for what feels like a perfect self-effacement. You forget you’re watching actors on a set and melt into the story, captivated by the nuances of their intonation and the emotions flitting across their faces.
So... I really enjoyed this movie, to my pleasant surprise. It’s dark and unsettling, rich and fascinating. It feels a little like Tolstoy, without the upper-crust pageantry and thousands of nicknames, but with the complexity of intrigue only possible with a large cast of characters and 144 minutes of film (or 1,000+ pages of text).
As you can see, I gave “The White Ribbon” a 5. I highly recommend watching it.
Moving along: Second semester second year is in full swing. I have at least one class I actually wholeheartedly enjoy, which is a godsend. We’re required to take a seminar in analyzing and presenting our thesis data, which is a godsend of another kind—the more motivation I have to crank this shit out, the better. I’m feeling really good about externship developments, and excited to learn where my classmates and I will be working next year. We’re a pretty special bunch of people, so I have every confidence we’ll each be doing some pretty cool work.
And so far, I’m doing a moderately decent job of keeping my head on straight and making time to enjoy myself and the people I love a little more, to the tune of dinners, live bands, plays, and drinks... All around good things. We’ll see if that holds true as the semester wears on, but at least I’m starting the year off on the right foot.
Until next time!
<3
* It must be said: I still love Will Smith, no matter what he does. That man gave me “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” and nothing can ever take that away.
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