Two quick takes on two films recently watched (in the midst of tons of work, though, I have seen not much at all):
“Dolls” — didn’t do it for me. I love the look of Takeshi Kitano’s films–the strange tableaux he uses for his composition–and the oblique rhythms they rely upon for character development and editing. But after a wonderful opening, where a troupe performs a traditional ‘puppet’ show about failed love, the film enacts three separate versions of those archetypal plots, none of which escaped a dull portentousness. Or, rather, what I liked in the 5 minutes of the puppet show I disliked in another ‘medium’ over 30-45 minutes; I don’t think the film translated well, and that may be a flaw shifting from the elaborate artifice of the dolls to ‘real’ people, or it might be an American watching a Japanese genre that he didn’t quite get.
(That said, it is intriguing to think about all of Kitano’s films as reworkings or translations of traditional Japanese genres, particularly in light of “Zatoichi,” which I found to be lovely and funny and surprising in its reimagination of hoary old samurai tropes. “Kikujiro,” too, has all these interesting intertitles with paintings and crafts that may be more culturally-resonant than this viewer could make out.)
“Primer”–as good as everyone said it was. This is a low-low-budget time-travel thriller, which runs skillfully and slyly through the paces of paradox and wonder and ethical dilemmas familiar to the genre. But I think the film approaches marvelous in two other ways: its look, even for a 16-mm film blown up to 35-mm, is Kubrickian, in the best way–astonishingly artful in its composition, attentive to design and color and location as vital bits of information. There’s this one amazing shot of the four guys working in their garage on whatever it is they’re working on, and the garage door closes, framing them each (a bit off-kilter) in the door’s few small rectangular windows. Yet it’s not full of flashy editing and whizzing cameras; instead, it uses such framing to shape the story.
The other very fine thing about this movie is its talk. I didn’t always follow, but the overlapping riffle between characters seemed lived-in. This is “realistic dialogue”–not for what is conveyed but the pitch-perfect attention to the rhythms of how engineers & friends & couples speak. Smart stuff.
And fun to watch.
I did not enjoy Primer as much as Mike. I suppose I should have looked more closely, but the film struck me as an overly ambitious concept hampered by a shoe-string budget. I will admit that I put it on late at night, but I found its look and its plot flat and uninvolving. I will definitely be curious to see what these folks are able to do with more gizmos at their disposal.
Primer = realistic dialogue. Yes, and well shot too. But the whole message (I guess) of the film seems to be about trust, and each person ends up sabotaging the other one, and I frankly got lost with who was doing what when. The monotone narration didn’t help, and when someone is wearing dark clothes sneaking into a house in the middle of the night, I can’t really tell who it is. And did it matter? Not really. “A” was betraying “B” or one-upping “B”s betrayal…
But why? Don’t know, and didn’t much care. In the end, I didn’t think the film was worth the effort in watching it.
PS Mike – Time travel should always have pretty flashing lights. Even Kubrick knew that.