popstress

Nominated for Best Feature Documentary. 

Pina is Wim Wenders' documentary about german choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch, a close friend of his. She died two days before shooting was scheduled to start, suddenly, five days after being diagnosed with cancer. 

Maybe that is the reason the film seems to be not so much about Pina herself, but the impact she made on the lives of her dancers and her work. There is very little footage of her, most of it old and short. Maybe it was just too painful. The film seems to circle the emptiness that is left behind after a death, trying to capture who she was without her ever being bodily present in the film. This is exacerbated by the fact that while all the new footage, all the dance scenes and interviews, are shot in 3D, we only ever see Pina in 2D, projected onto a cinema screen behind the screen. She remains distant, static, flat.

This is especially noteworthy because the film is such a touching celebration of  movement and the human body. These beautiful bodies of her dancers, trained to endure pain, performing seemingly impossible movements, perhaps ironically reminded me of the fragility of the human body. As we watch them perform beautiful choreographies the way Wenders films them makes them seem far away and small, like we could pick them up with our hands. They seem vulnerable and tough at the same time. 

The physicality of dance is very much the focus. The sound recording allows us to hear the dancers breathing, the swoosh of their clothes, their hair, everything.

Performances from Bausch's pieces are intercut with interviews with her dancers, which are presented as voiceovers with close-up filmed portraits of them (listening to their voiceover?). Like friends gathering for a wake they recount anecdotes from their time with her and express what she meant to them. 

This is very much what the film feels like, not so much a portrait, but rather a homage, a way of dealing with her death by remembering her, which is not the same thing. It does not really tell someone who didn't know her who she was, it reminds people who did what she meant to them.

Which doesn't make it less enjoyable. I can only recommend seeing this on the big screen and in 3D. It is one of the more useful implementations of 3D, it facilitates the immersion in the dance performances. 

I felt profoundly touched, not neccessarily by the memories of Pina, but by her choreographies. Which, I suspect, is what her work and legacy are all about. Mission accomplished.

 

 

This year I have upped the stakes and decided to not only watch all Best Picture nominees, but also Best Actress, Best Feature Documantary and as a maybe, maybe bonus Best Actor (Best Director is included in Best Picture anyway.

This is the list of films:

• The Artist 
• The Descendants 
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close 
• The Help 
• Hugo 
• Midnight in Paris 
• Moneyball
• The Tree of Life 
• War Horse
• Albert Nobbs
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
• The Iron Lady
• My Week with Marilyn
• Hell and Back Again
• If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
• Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
• Pina 3D
• Undefeated

Extra points

• A Better Life
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I am hoping that I will be able to post something about each movie.

Let the games begin!

I hope to review as many of these movies as possible, so stay tuned!

 

 

 

I went to see a showing of "Wings of Desire" a few weeks ago (part of reRun theater's free series of Criterion collection films). 

"Der Himmel über Berlin" is one of my favorite movies and one of my earliest memories of a film making a huge emotional impression on me. The first time I saw it (by chance, on Arte TV) I was probably around 15 years old. I lived somewhere in southern Germany, counting the days until I could escape what felt to me like countryside hell and run off to Berlin. 

I don't know when Berlin became this symbol of (personal) freedom in my mind, I can't remember a time when it was not so. I had and would visit West Berlin regularly, my aunt and her family lived there. I loved the drive through the East German zone, the scary GDR border guards who would scrutinze passport photos and faces intensely for long seconds sent pleasent chills of fear down my spine (I would later learn that they were trained to identify people by the shape of their ears).

So when I first saw "Der Himmel über Berlin" I was thrilled, I remember being transfixed, crying, the film lingering in my mind for a long time. I waited for years until it came on again to tape it on VHS and then rewatch it, mostly during bouts of pubescent depression, later with a glass of red wine.

Then, finally, I moved to Berlin. I felt enveloped by the city and this was one of the rare occasions where reality did not disappoint. It was everything I had imagined*. I recognized places from the movie, others, like Potsdamer Platz were unrecognizable by then, and even now are irreconcilable in my mind.

I remember the feeling of awe and happyness when I entered the Staatsbibliothek at Potsdamer Platz for the first time, and realized that THIS WAS THE PLACE where the Angels hang out in the film. I am not (yet?) delusional enough to claim that my days at Stabi, spent trying to work on my MA, were the happiest of my life, but they were certainly brightened by this fact.

Strangely I don't remember seeing the movie while I was in Berlin. Or maybe that's not strange at all, maybe I did not need to watch it. In fact, I don't remember the last time I saw it before this reRun show.

So after 11 years in Berlin, 3 years in London and having just arrived in New York I was really looking forward to it, like an old friend. It seemed to promise a bit of familiarity and comfort. 

I was surprised to recognize so many places in Berlin that I don't think I recognized before. Much of the movie seems to have been filmed in the area where I lived most of the time I was in Berlin. I still feel that Wim Wenders managed to capture so much of what the city feels like. To me the film has always been at least as much about Berlin as it is about the people who live there or the protagonists. In that way the english translation of the title "Wings of Desire" (literal from German: "The Skies Above Berlin") may not be ideal. My favorite parts are still the Handke poems and the scenes in the library. 

This time around though some things made me laugh as well: the scenes in the club, so infused with the 80s sense of seriousness and drama. I also hate Marion's last neverending monologue (I suspect I always have, I seemed to have deleted it from my consciousness entirely. I expect to have forgotten about it in a few more months). It's not just the sheer cornyness, it is also the idea of this woman waiting for the man who will make her "whole", the concept that only in the union of man and woman eternity, perfection can be found. 

But most of all I was stunned how instantly it transported me back to Berlin. In my mind at least it is so interwoven with the essence of the city that has such an important part in my life. Watching the film is like slipping on an old leather glove. It never ceases to amaze me how Wim Wenders manages to evoke these emotions, not push them on you like some other directors (*cough* Spielberg *cough*), but somehow conjure them up from inside the viewer. 

Considering how much I love this film it is only fitting that this year's Oscar nominee extravaganza begins with another Wenders movie: Pina 3D.

More to come soon, stay tuned!

 

 

*objects in rear view mirror may appear greater than they are

Love the webseries Husbands, about an actor and an out baseball star who get drunk married in Vegas. It's been going for a while, but I've only just heard about it. It is written and produced by Jane Espenson (writer on Buffy, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, Game of Thrones). Need I say more?

Here's the first episode

Took me a while to really get into it, the performances are a bit camp, but it grew on me and by the 4th episode I was won over. Which amounts to approximately 2 minutes. So give it a try.

 

 

I don't know that I agree with everything in this piece, (specifically the unquestioned connection between sexuality and ethnicity) but it is certainly making some interesting observations:

I’ve never wondered about Knightley’s vagina before. Her characters, though romantic leads, seem vagina-less, and yet watching A Dangerous Method, I was very aware of it. To be quite honest, I was concerned with its scent, which, according to my imagination, is distinct but not unpleasant.

I haven't seen A Dangerous Method yet, but this kinda makes me want to. 

so. good.

I seem to remember AFW is a Ryan aficionado (aficionada?)?

check it out.

 

Check out this insightful article by Linda Holmes on the NPR "Monkey see" blog

But there is something about this narrative hectoring about men not understanding manhood that seems particularly brutal in that it specifically attacks them for emotional ineptitude while simultaneously attacking them for having emotions. Men who are emotionally reactive (like Hornsby's character here) are weak; men who are emotionally inert (like the Man Up guys) are clueless. In both cases, women don't want to have sex with them, even if they're married to them.

Interesting stuff!

 

LOVE!

check out the other episodes as well!

It has a strangely soothing effect after about 2 min.

(this is a metaphor for Dr. Metz giving birth to popstress. pretty badass.) 

Believe it or not, AFW and I have not always been the knowledgeable and enthusiastic film nerds we are today. No Sir! There was a time, way, way back, when we did not watch a movie and think: Hold on, the mechanics of this story remind me of the Freudian approach Terry Gilliam took when he referenced the pivotal scene of Hitchcock's "Vertigo" for his 1995 film "12 Monkeys".(Please do not scrutinise the preceeding sentence too thoroughly). We were so young. 

I can only speak for myself here, but seriously, if it had not been for Dr. Walter Metz I am pretty sure my university studies would have taken a different trajectory. He came to the JFK Institute, where both AFW and I were studying, as a Fulbright Scholar to teach Film and TV Studies for two semesters in 2004/2005. I had always been interested in popular culture, but until then it had not occurred to me that this interest could have more than a casual place in academia. I was used to Professors pushing back when I suggested subjects for my papers that focused on popular culture and often felt like I was just being lazy when focusing on what I truly knew and cared about.

Dr. Metz changed all that. He showed me that there is value in popular culture beyond entertainment. That deep truths can not only be found in French cinema but also in "Batman". That academic film criticism is as much about enthusiasm as it is about equipping yourself with the right tools, and knowing when and how to apply them. 

This knowledge has not only deepend my enjoyment of popular culture and led to me writing my master's thesis on Battlestar Galactica, it is also what motivates me to keep exploring. 

For that I am forever grateful.

Recently AFW sent me this video of a talk he gave at the Global Media Research Center at Southern llinois University Carbondale.

It brings back memories of university, when we'd sit in the packed classroom, furiously scribbling down notes, one aha! moment chasing the other.

Good times.

Enjoy.