The Criterion Collection

[brandon_260]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

[Show spoiler]I just finished watching Medium Cool and a few of the choice extra features on the Blu-ray.



Early in Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool, the camera passes by a poster of Michel Poiccard, the character played by Jean-Paul Belmondo in the 1960 Jean-Luc Godard film, Breathless. Later in the film, a television announcer references Godard's 1963 film, Contempt. These direct homages accentuate Godard's deeper influences on this Wexler film from a more technical level. The cinéma vérité style that Wexler employs in Medium Cool to depict fictional characters in the midst of the actual riots associated with the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago may remind one of Godard's camera lovingly following the three main characters of the movie, Band of Outsiders, through the Bastille neighborhoods of Paris. Two pivotal scenes in Medium Cool may even raise the question of whether or not Godard's apparent fascination with grisly car accidents provided additional inspiration. I cannot speculate on the full extent of Godard's influences on Haskell Wexler's brilliant 1969 film, but the explosive powder keg tension of revolutions waiting to unfold in social and artistic terms alike on both sides of the ocean during the 1960s is evident in the works of both directors during that era.

A common scientific assertion that one cannot observe something without altering what is being observed is often applicable to the world of televised news media. Every casual viewer of television news footage wonders if what he or she is watching is reality or simply a cameraman's interpretation of reality as the people who are under observation react to the sight of a news reporter in their presence. "The medium is the message.", according to communication philosopher Marshall McLuhan, and the title of Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool is taken from McLuhan's thesis that television is a "cool" medium in that it needs only minimal interaction from the viewer. Medium Cool played on the audience perception of reality by following actors through the fray of the Chicago city streets and convention centers in 1968 while historic events were actually unfolding, but one cannot help but wonder if the end result is really more fictional than what we see on nightly televised news updates.

I simply prefer to think of Medium Cool, with its combination of fictional storylines and actual news footage, as an explosive firecracker of a movie that captures the essence of 1968 America far beyond what any straightforward documentary could ever hope to match. My appreciation of Medium Cool as a historically significant work is seeded in my belief that one can learn more about history by watching or reading the fictional works from any respective era than one might learn by absorbing dry historical documents. I learned more about England's Poor Law of 1934, for instance, by reading the Charles Dickens novel, Oliver Twist, than I may have learned by studying it in a history class. Through the microcosm of the life of fictional news reporter John Cassellis (Robert Forster) and his relationship with a mother and son who have moved to Chicago from West Virginia, the viewer is exposed to a myriad of sociopolitical 1968 issues, such as racial tensions, slum poverty, Vietnam protests, ethical dilemmas of televised news, and the aftermath of the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy.

I will never truly understand the dynamics of 1968 America from the vantage point of my own generation, but I have always been fascinated with the historic events and artistic milestones of that era. Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool is an enjoyable work of cinema to my eyes for the simple reason that the Criterion Blu-ray brings the color and vivid liveliness of a past time to the screen in astonishing detail while the storyline enables me to grasp the coattails of characters about whom I care as they maneuver through the hazards and wonders of social upheaval on city streets and crowded parks.

I just finished watching my copy and I was about to come in here and spout off some comment comparing the film to late 60's Godard. Great film, but I'm definitely going to need to watch it a few more times before it fully sinks in.

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by brandon_260

I just finished watching my copy and I was about to come in here and spout off some comment comparing the film to late 60's Godard. Great film, but I'm definitely going to need to watch it a few more times before it fully sinks in.

I will be exploring Medium Cool several more times as well. My above review is more of "broad stroke" first impression of the film, and I'd like to approach it from different angles in the future.

[fdm]

Originally Posted by Sigma

The trick is to say you're prejudiced against all races.

It just so happened that their "random" algorithm that made me the very first jury member selected last time somehow magically made me the very first jury member selected this time. Guess I should go buy some lottery tickets.

I'll keep your advice in mind for next time. Plus I'll show up late, see if that makes a difference.

At least this time I didn't make it to the trial.

[fdm]

Originally Posted by shortmartin

Or that there is always at least some reasonable doubt.

Went with in retrospect I found some of what an officer had said about me in somewhat similar circumstances (didn't get to find out all the details) to be a bit inaccurate.

[jw007]

Originally Posted by the sordid sentinel

Finally saw Le Cercle Rouge and all I can say is wow. Again, the influence on Mann/Friedkin is palpable. I felt like Fernando Rey was going to step out from behind a corner at any moment and join the heist. Glad I was able to find a copy. Worth every penny. I can't imagine how may times I will be revisiting this title.

COUNT ME IN too! I finally finished watching Le Cercle Rouge last night. Amazing how suspenseful the heist scene was! Literally 30 minutes went by that I lost track of time watching this long sequence. I ended up paying top dollar for this at a local Barnes & Noble ($36 + tax) about 2 weeks ago when there were not any coupons around. I just didn't want to take a chance as this was already OOP and selling for $60 on Amazon. I had another store transfer this to a local store of mine actually, which is RARE, as company policy typically does not allow that. It is worth every penny and IT IS Melville's best film (as it was his final film as well).

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

Yes! I'm glad that you enjoyed Le Cercle Rouge.

Jansen, the sharpshooter with addiction struggles, is one of my all-time favorite movie characters. I did not realize until fairly recently that this character was played by Yves Montand, the lead actor from another Criterion title, The Wages of Fear.

The sharpshooter in Le Cercle Rouge was fantastic. I honestly expected that scene to go wrong but somehow they succeeded even though

[Show spoiler]they all died at the end

. Brilliant heist film.

[Scottie]

Originally Posted by the sordid sentinel

Finally saw Le Cercle Rouge and all I can say is wow. Again, the influence on Mann/Friedkin is palpable. I felt like Fernando Rey was going to step out from behind a corner at any moment and join the heist. Glad I was able to find a copy. Worth every penny. I can't imagine how may times I will be revisiting this title.

It's one of the best movies that I've ever seen.

It kept me at the edge of my seat at all times and the ending was just fantastic. Such a wonderful film.

Glad you enjoyed it!

[jw007]

Blind buy comparison:

Last year I blind-bought In The Realm of the Senses which nearly touches on pornography. The question I have is, though this film isn't nearly as distasteful and pornographic as Salo, I still would not recommend blind-buying this film. Has anyone else blind-bought this one as well too?

[Hawkguy]

Originally Posted by jw007

Blind buy comparison:

Last year I blind-bought In The Realm of the Senses which nearly touches on pornography. The question I have is, though this film isn't nearly as distasteful and pornographic as Salo, I still would not recommend blind-buying this film. Has anyone else blind-bought this one as well too?

I blind-bought both of them and they became two of my favorite films.

[Scottie]

Originally Posted by CoopFilm

I blind-bought both of them and they became two of my favorite films.

What about them made you like them so much? The bizarre nature?

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by jw007

Blind buy comparison:

Last year I blind-bought In The Realm of the Senses which nearly touches on pornography. The question I have is, though this film isn't nearly as distasteful and pornographic as Salo, I still would not recommend blind-buying this film. Has anyone else blind-bought this one as well too?

I rented both before buying and by far prefer the Oshima.

The piece Dana Stevens wrote for Slate back in January after Oshima's passing is very much worth reading:

Going all the Way

The great Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, who died earlier this week at 80, was a key figure in the Japanese new-wave cinema of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Over the course of a four-decade career (his last film, Taboo, came out in 1999), Oshima never stopped experimenting, whether formally or in terms of subject matter. And even as an older, established filmmaker (and a fixture on Japanese talk shows) Oshima remained reliably perverse, ever ready to test the boundaries of both the censors and his audience. Max Mon Amour (1986) tells the story of a French diplomat’s wife (Charlotte Rampling) who falls passionately in love with a male chimpanzee, while the WWII internment-camp drama Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), starring David Bowie and Takeshi Kitano, gained a cult following for its homoeroticism, which was shockingly explicit for the time.

But Oshima will be best remembered—both in the popular imagination and in my own—as the director of In the Realm of the Senses, a sexually graphic retelling of a real-life tabloid scandal turned popular folk legend. The film was the object of an international obscenity scandal upon its release in 1976. It took 20 years for the uncut film to be projected in the United States; after nearly 40, an uncensored version has yet to be shown in Japan.

In the Realm of the Senses (the title is sometimes translated as Empire of the Senses, and in Japanese means something more like Bullfight of Love) depicts the passionate, destructive amour fou between a prostitute-turned-chambermaid, Sada (Eiko Matsuda), and Kichi (Tatsuya Fuji), the married man who owns the inn where she’s employed. After beginning an obsessive affair, Sada and Kichi drop out of society, drinking and ****ing their way from one geisha house to the next in a downward spiral of dissolution—or is it an upward spiral toward erotic transcendence? It all ends (as did the real-life story, with which every Japanese viewer of the time would have been familiar) in a Wagnerian Liebestod, complete with strangulation, castration, and a love message scrawled in blood across sheets and skin.

It is, I suppose, a shame that a filmmaker as multifaceted (and as fiercely political) as Oshima will be remembered primarily for his raunchy succès de scandale. But you’ll have to look elsewhere for a critic to champion the director’s obscure cuts, because In the Realm of the Senses happens to be one of my cinematic Ur-texts, a movie that would easily find its way onto my personal list of top 10 films of all time. When I heard the news that Oshima had died, it was my vivid sense memory of this film—which I’ve seen probably half a dozen times in my life, the last of them more than 15 years ago—that sent me to my editor asking if I could write something on Oshima: neither an obituary nor a review, but a history of my now decades-old love for his most famous film. And then my editor said yes, and I almost wished I hadn’t asked.

The idea of re-entering the realm of Senses was scary on multiple levels. First there was the intensity of the movie itself, which is as unrelenting an aesthetic experience as a Greek tragedy or the abovementioned Wagner opera—basically, we’re talking an hour and a half straight of graphic, unsimulated sex scenes that steadily escalate into a literal orgy of violence and mutilation. Second, there was the even more daunting project of revisiting my 20-year-old self, who had made this movie such a pillar of her aesthetic canon ever since seeing it at a repertory house in Paris. Forget how the movie would hold up—how would I hold up if I no longer loved the film as I once had? Would the now me discover that my younger self was impossibly self-dramatizing and pretentious?


I’ll get to the encounter between those present and past selves in a minute. But about the encounter between myself and the movie, I needn’t have worried. Even the seventh time through, under maximally banal viewing conditions—streamed from Amazon to my laptop, not rapt in the dark on the Rive Gauche—In the Realm of the Senses is a film like no other, a magical fusion of art and pornography that somehow renders debates about the distinction between those two categories boringly beside the point. Asking if this film is porn is like asking if prehistoric cave paintings showing men with erections are porn. They’re porn, they’re art, they’re elemental and beautiful; it doesn’t matter.

In the Realm of the Senses isn’t about sex, it is sex: Sex is the medium it moves in and the language it speaks. The story seems to unfold in a parallel universe where virtually every social gesture is also a sexual one: Before the lovers even meet for the first time, we’ve already witnessed an attempted girl-on-girl seduction, an act of shared voyeurism, and a homeless old man being mocked by children who throw snowballs at his exposed genitals. And once Sada and Kichi’s affair gets rolling, forget about it. These two use sex acts of steadily increasing kinkiness (including some questionably consensual encounters with servant girls and an elderly geisha) to express every interpersonal affect from jealousy to hostility to ruinous passion. They’re bonobos in kimonos.

Of course, sex (especially filmed sex) is always about more than just itself, and In the Realm of the Senses is simultaneously, and subtly, a film of social protest against the repressive government and socially conservative culture of postwar Japan. There’s a powerful, dialogue-free late scene in which Kichi, reduced to a wraith by Sada’s insatiable demands, briefly leaves what can only be described as their sex den for a walk through the village. He passes a military parade cheered on by a crowd waving Japanese flags. (The film is set in 1936, when the empire was undergoing an intense period of military mobilization.) The image of Kichi shuffling blearily up the street in the opposite direction from the line of marching soldiers drives home Oshima’s point with exquisite simplicity: His lovers may be too wrapped up in each other’s body to be conscious protesters, but their very deviance from societal norms—their pursuit of carnal pleasure at the cost of all else—makes them, in some way, radical.

If In the Realm of the Senses is sex, then in my 20s I became something of a nymphomaniac. I don’t know that the film had any direct impact on my sexual behavior—I didn’t start carousing with geishas or strangling men with obi belts—but it certainly had an impact on my moviegoing behavior, the way I thought about what movies could and should do. I fell hard for In the Realm of the Senses during a time in my life—in many people’s lives, I think—when intensity and passion were highly valued qualities, in the movie theater and out. This was one of the films I would drag new boyfriends to see, in an act of seduction that was also the throwing down of a cinephilic gauntlet: Could they go the distance? (Once, memorably, I took a guy I didn’t know very well to it on a first date, never to hear from him again. Just as well.)

Now, in my mid-40s, I experience In the Realm of the Senses a little differently: I identify far less with the self-and-other destructive passion of the unstoppable Sada, and sometimes found myself wanting to scold her in the words of the respectable old sugar daddy who unknowingly supports her and Kichi’s lifestyle: “Sada, think of your future!” Additionally, two and a half decades on in my own sexual life, I now know that I will never do most of the things pictured in this movie (especially those involving hard-boiled eggs) and feel nothing but relief at that fact.

But everything that made me fall for In the Realm of the Senses in the first place is still there, and as marvelously seductive as ever: the film’s lavish pictorial beauty (virtually every frame could be the subject of a Japanese erotic woodblock print); its haunting love theme; and the incredibly vibrant and naturalistic and often funny connection between the two lovers, played by Mitsuda and Fuji with such delicacy and finesse it’s almost impossible to not believe that the love, like the sex, was unsimulated. Watching In the Realm of the Senses again and discovering I still loved it freed me to view that younger, Sada-identified, peak-experience-seeking me with amusement and affection. I probably was self-dramatizing and pretentious—forgive me, dudes I dated—but when it comes to this movie, I was right.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by iScottie

What about them made you like them so much? The bizarre nature?

I don't think so, for one, both films are very political works.

[ravenus]

Originally Posted by iScottie

What about them made you like them so much? The bizarre nature?

I love In The Realm... because the sexual relationship also has a strong emotional dimension, helped by the beautiful chemistry between the 2 actors. Apart from a couple of very outre scenes (one with an old hooker and another with food), the sex flows very naturally and does not seem imposed. The political allusions are less important to me.

[Hawkguy]

Originally Posted by iScottie

What about them made you like them so much? The bizarre nature?

I can't think of many other films that I was glued to watching more than Salo, and especially any other that made me feel such a mix of emotions...it's as effective a film as I can think of, and that just makes me love it. I think it sits as my 12th-ish favorite film.

Senses isn't really 'bizarre' (well, there are a couple of weird scenes...but nothing too out there). It's almost a horror film to me, and I love unconventional horror. I'm really drawn to the themes of destructive sexual obsession.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by CoopFilm

I'm really drawn to the themes of destructive sexual obsession.

[Hawkguy]

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

I'm never not in the mood for this

[Scottie]

Originally Posted by CoopFilm

I can't think of many other films that I was glued to watching more than Salo, and especially any other that made me feel such a mix of emotions...it's as effective a film as I can think of, and that just makes me love it. I think it sits as my 12th-ish favorite film.

Senses isn't really 'bizarre' (well, there are a couple of weird scenes...but nothing too out there). It's almost a horror film to me, and I love unconventional horror. I'm really drawn to the themes of destructive sexual obsession.

I'm not really affected TOO TOO much when it comes to seeing gross things on movies. Salò on the other hand seems like it'll affect me differently. I don't think I can bring myself to watching people tortured and degraded like that. I heard the novel is even worse.

Also, in regards to your interest in destructive sexual obsessions, I can assume that you're a big fan of Shame? Not only for the theme, but I know how you're Fassbender's #1 fan

[Hawkguy]

Originally Posted by iScottie

Also, in regards to your interest in destructive sexual obsessions, I can assume that you're a big fan of Shame? Not only for the theme, but I know how you're Fassbender's #1 fan

You can assume that, in both regards

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by iScottie

I'm not really affected TOO TOO much when it comes to seeing gross things on movies. Salò on the other hand seems like it'll affect me differently. I don't think I can bring myself to watching people tortured and degraded like that. I heard the novel is even worse.

Scott, we should sync-watch Cannibal Holocaust one of these days. That's a big blind spot in my movie watching.

[Hawkguy]

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

Scott, we should sync-watch Cannibal Holocaust one of these days. That's a big blind spot in my movie watching.

You should

Originally Posted by iScottie

I heard the novel is even worse.

From what I've read, it's so much worse

[Scottie]

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

Scott, we should sync-watch Cannibal Holocaust one of these days. That's a big blind spot in my movie watching.

Are you nuts?!

I saw a picture of that film some years back and it had a girl with a totem pole stuffed down her throat. True story: my throat started to feel weird after seeing that picture. Ugh.