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2012

January 11, 2013 by raschuette

A funny thing happened to the Gay Guru of Cinema on his way to the repertory house this Fall.  He stopped by the New York Film Festival and, quite surprisingly, found himself engaged by the current state of the cinema.  So, please, forgive him a slight detour as he reveals his favorite films of 2012 with the caveat that he still has a number of films to catch up with.

1.   Amour:  While always appreciative of the rigorously precise nature of Michael Haneke’s direction in earlier films such as The Piano Teacher and The White Ribbon, locating a beating heart in the Austrian director’s works had always proved to be an elusive goal for the Gay Guru.  Not so in Amour, a clinical but yet still emotionally devastating portrait of a well-to-do octogenarian couple experiencing the simultaneous mental and physical decline of their very beings.  Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, veterans of the French New Wave that emerged in the late 1950s to forever change the cinematic landscape, etch an indelible portrait of the ravaged couple and are – in all likelihood – the primary culprits in providing Haneke’s film with the warmth that the Guru had up to now been unable to locate in his other works.  While firmly secure in Amour’s status as the best film of 2012, the Gay Guru can only sit back now and wait to see if the film proves the glorious exception to the rule.

2. Holy Motors:  Four months after first seeing Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, the term “bat-shit crazy” still springs immediately to mind when the Gay Guru ponders how best to describe it to people.  Unfolding over the course of a single day, the film follows the sole passenger of a limousine ride through Paris who morphs into a series of widely disparate and completely unconnected characters — a homeless woman, a family man, and a psychotic dwarf-like freak to name just three — and, in turn, proceeds to act out vignettes from those characters’ lives.  As a film that is more visual poem than narrative-based drama, it’s not one that would typically wend its way onto the Guru’s “Best in Show” run-down but there is just something so unique here that it cannot be ignored.  Certainly not everyone’s cup of tea but, should you be one of the Guru’s more adventurous followers, you may just want to take a leap of faith on it.

3. The Deep Blue Sea:  Simply recalling the many wonderful parts of Terence Davies’ only-somewhat-successful 2000 adaptation of The House of Mirth, the classic Edith Wharton novel of a woman caught in a web of hypocrisy spun by New York society clearly suggested to the Gay Guru that the director would be the right choice to direct The Deep Blue Sea, an adaptation of Terrence Rafferty’s 1952 play dramatizing the story of a woman caught in a web of hypocrisy spun in post-war London.  And, indeed, the Guru was right.  But, while that earlier piece was seriously hampered by the oh-so-mannered lead performance of Gillian Anderson as the ensnared Lily Bart — and, yes, the Guru does realize that his opinion here is in the distinct critical minority — Davies’ latest adaptation is single-handedly elevated to the upper echelons of 2012′s cinematic offerings by the remarkable performance of Rachel Weisz.  Her Hester Collyer — by turns proud, vulnerable, pathetic — is one for the ages.  That the Academy somehow still didn’t find space for her in their Best Actress line-up is the year’s greatest injustice.

4.  Zero Dark Thirty:  Kathryn Bigelow made history in 2010, becoming the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director for her work on The Hurt Locker.  While that film was for many their first introduction to her, the Gay Guru has been watching closely while Ms. Bigelow crafted fascinating genre pictures since the early 90s, with such titles as Near Dark, Point Break, and Strange Days to her credit.  Her new film – and for the Guru’s money, the best American film of 2012 – is yet another genre exercise, this one a remarkably dense procedural about one female CIA agent’s obsessive ten-year search for Osama bin Laden in the wake of the September 11 attacks.  While that search occupies the majority of her film’s nearly three-hour running time, Ms. Bigelow opts to bookend it – beginning her film with a startling segment that tackles head-on the CIA’s acknowledged use of torture and ending it with a riveting reenactment of the military raid on the bin Laden complex.  The former, predictably, has provoked criticism from those who view Bigelow’s restrained approach to the material — her calling card as a director — as a missed opportunity to forcefully condemn the practice of torture.  But the Guru thinks that’s missing the point entirely.  Like any artist worth her salt would, Bigelow simply allows the drama to unfold unfettered from personal bias while asking her audience to make up their own minds.

5. Lincoln:  Like this nation’s first president George Washington, the Gay Guru cannot tell a lie.  When Steven Spielberg emerged from behind the curtain at Alice Tully Hall to introduce the secret preview of his “almost completed” Lincoln at this year’s New York Film Festival, the Guru felt a small pang of disappointment.  While certainly a must-see title on any serious moviegoer’s year-end list, there was no denying that other as-yet-unreleased films whose names had been bandied about as possibilities for this year’s secret screening – Django Unchained, Les Misérables, and Zero Dark Thirty – would have sent the Guru into more sustained spasms of ecstasy.  Then, after the lights went down and an opening scene unspooled that exhibited Mr. Spielberg at his most cloying, the Gay Guru could only take a deep breath, locate the nearest exit sign to plot his escape route if necessary, and gird himself for the worst.  But then, like the proverbial Phoenix, what quickly emerged from the ashes of that initial misstep was a bracingly intelligent political thriller that is, arguably, the most subdued film of Spielberg’s storied career.  For that, one must certainly credit playwright Tony Kushner’s intelligent pruning of A Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s behemoth source material, down to a singular storyline.  Credit too Daniel Day-Lewis who – after his fire-and-brimstone turn in There Will Be Blood – executes a complete 180 here with an extraordinarily quiet, yet no less effective, lead performance.  And in bringing that majestic calm to the film’s core, Day-Lewis allows his supporting players – most notably Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones – to shine in more showy turns.  Throughout his career, collaboration has always been an important key to Spielberg’s work and in Lincoln it has clearly reaped significant dividends.

The Gay Guru of Cinema’s Acting Prizes of 2012:

Best Actor:  Daniel Day-Lewis (“Lincoln“); runner-up: Christoph Waltz (“Django Unchained“)

Best Actress:  Rachel Weisz (“The Deep Blue Sea“); runner-up: Marion Cotillard (“Rust and Bone“)

Best Supporting Actor:  John Goodman (“Flight“); runner-up: Jason Clarke (“Zero Dark Thirty“)

Best Supporting Actress:  Anne Hathaway (“Les Miserables“); runner-up: Alicia Vikander (“Anna Karenina“)

Cameo of the Year:  James Badge Dale (“Flight“)

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All I Want For Christmas … 2011

December 28, 2011 by raschuette

What can the Gay Guru of Cinema say.  It’s been a lousy year in so many ways that he hasn’t felt capable of putting his cinematic musings to cyber paper in a very long time.  Yet, he is grateful to all of those who have encouraged him to persevere so he plans to reignite the blog with his annual Christmas wishlist of titles from his personal library that he would love to see make the move to Blu-ray in 2012.

From last year’s wishlist, Santa was kind enough to deliver the Blu debuts of both Barry Lyndon and Once Upon a Time in the West.   And he’s already left word in the Guru’s stocking that two other titles from the list — Lawrence of Arabia and Jaws — will be forthcoming in the new year.

So, without further ado, the Guru’s Top 10 wishlist for Blu (done appropriately in red and green) in 2012:

Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)

The Guru caught up with Polanski’s masterpiece of greed and murder in 1930s Los Angeles courtesy of a MoMA screening this past September.  It had been much too long and he was reminded, yet again, how on occasion lightning does indeed strike to give us a film in which every element is pitch perfect.  Chinatown is one of those films.

Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)

With the recent announcement that Kino will be bringing Fritz Lang’s searing noir Scarlet Street to Blu in 2012, it seems only appropriate to wonder where in the world is Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, the title considered by many to be the quintessential film noir.  Nor does the Gay Guru disagree with that assessment.  What’s more, when speaking of those essential performances in film history, Barbara Stanwyck’s femme fatale must be on any serious list.

Far From Heaven (Haynes, 2002)

The Gay Guru’s favorite film from the first decade of the 21st century, Todd Haynes’ loving homage to the genius of Douglas Sirk (see below) should have seen the Blu light of day long before this if just for its extraordinary color palette.  Yet, given the shoddy treatment it received from its distributor with its bare-bones standard definition release, the Guru isn’t holding his breath.  And that’s certainly a pity, if not a crime.

Hannah and Her Sisters (Allen, 1985)

With the exciting news that we’ll be getting both Annie Hall and Manhattan in January of 2012 — a big deal since many thought that these titles would never see an upgrade — the Guru now awaits just the release of the last piece in Woody’s trifecta of masterpieces.  Not to mention that it’s also a serious mash note – in brilliant color — to the Guru’s adopted hometown.

Imitation of Life (Sirk, 1959)

See above.  All of Sirk’s 50s melodramas, each a masterpiece, scream out for a Blu upgrade.  Since three of them — All that Heaven Allows, Magnificent Obsession, Written on the Wind – are Criterion titles, the Guru would never have thought that Mr. Sirk would have to wait this long.  Is there a rights issue here?  Well, there’s not much the Guru can do but jot down his favorite of the maestro of melodrama’s masterworks on his wishlist and leave it up to Santa to do the rest.

 

In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)

Another Criterion title in serious need of an upgrade.  If you’re a film lover but not yet familiar with Wong Kar-Wai’s work, do yourself a favor and put this one in your Blockbuster and/or Netflix queue.  It surely belongs in any legitimate discussion of last decade’s finest.  A film where all of the individual elements — each outstanding its own right — combine to make something singularly remarkable.

Nashville (Altman, 1975)

The Guru remembers being bowled over by Altman’s opus when it opened 36 years ago and, yet again, when he recently caught up with it as part of the American Museum of the Moving Image’s “See It Big” series.  His friends — aka KK and The Dude — were not so thrilled and he will be posting his thoughts on this unique film in the near future.  One of the top ten films of the 70s and, shockingly, out of print even on DVD, it’s time for Santa to make this happen.

The Poseidon Adventure (Neame, 1972)

Because every list needs a great popcorn feature that allows the Guru to sit back and let the brain take a rest, it seems a no-brainer that the granddaddy of the modern-day disaster genre needs to find its way home.  After all, we’ve had to endure the Blu release of not just the dreadful 2005 television remake of the same name but the equally heinous Poseidon from 2006 that sank quickly in theaters nationwide.  But, seeing as 2012 will be the 40th anniversary of the film’s release, it might not be too tall of an order for Santa to make this happen.

Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950)

The Guru broke his own rule of limiting a director to one film on his list because, simply put, he needs Billy’s deadly duo of Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard delivered under his Christmas tree ASAP.  Because if Stanwyck is iconic in the former, what then is Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond in the latter?  Her final descent in madness down the grand staircase of her palatial home is one of those great moments that screams for Blu.


Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

After an interminable wait since Psycho‘s release in late 2010, the first quarter of 2012 will see a mini flood of Hitchcock treasures wind their way to Blu:  Notorious, Rebecca, Spellbound, and To Catch a Thief have all been announced.  Yet, as elusive as Scotty’s quest for Madeleine Elster, remains the crown jewel in the director’s canon — not to mention the film that sits proudly at #1 on the Guru’s list of the all-time greats.

Posted in Neither Here Nor There | Leave a Comment »

A Man Escaped

September 3, 2010 by raschuette

“I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry.”
Night Moves (1975)

The Gay Guru of Cinema has reached the moment when he must look across a chasm – the one separating those directors whose reverence among cinephiles the casual moviegoer gets and those for whom such love leaves that same moviegoer simply scratching his or her head – and try, somehow, to convince his readers to take an excursion over that divide for one such filmmaker. At the same time, he must acknowledge that cinephiles themselves are by no means a monolithic lot, each of us struggling at times to see what others might see in any given filmmaker’s body of work.

For the Guru, this dilemma is nowhere more acute then when confronted with the cinematic chat fests of Eric Rohmer, the beloved French director of such films as My Night at Maud’s and Claire’s Knee. While Andrew Sarris, the dean of American critics and a personal hero of the Guru’s, once opined when discussing Maud that “there’s nothing more cinematic than the spectacle of a man and a woman staying up all night talking,” the Guru must respectfully disagree. While he certainly appreciates the intelligence behind Rohmer’s films, the Guru freely admits that the director’s often static camera makes it necessary for him to come to a Rohmer film armed with toothpicks should he feel the need to prop open his eyelids.

The point of all this chatter being that as the Guru feels about Rohmer so too do many people feel about Robert Bresson, the director of A Man Escaped which unspooled recently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and which, in a perfect world, would be more widely seen. In fact, when the Guru emailed a good friend and fellow cinephile – let’s call him Zorba – about the possibility of joining him for the Bresson screening, only an ominous silence ensued. Clearly, Bresson, like Rohmer, is not everyone’s cup of tea. So, what is it about Monsieur Bresson that causes such antipathy?

First off, the Guru must come clean. He is certainly no expert here. Because there is always so much to see, inevitably, certain films slip through the cracks and, unfortunately, Bresson’s work has proved an elusive target for the Guru. Prior to this last screening, only Au hasard Balthazar and Pickpocket had managed to cross his cinematic path. The silver lining to this – because, as you know, the Gay Guru always looks for the sunny side of any street – is that playing catch-up isn’t a monumental undertaking because, over a 50-year career, Bresson only made 13 feature-length films. Yet, despite that, an astonishing percentage of them, 9 of 13, garnered votes in Sight & Sound’s 2002 poll of polls, with 4 of those 9 finding enough support to reach “must see” status for the Guru.

A Man Escaped, the first of those four to screen locally, is certainly typical of Bresson’s style in its use of non-professional actors amid minimal sets. Considered the director’s most hope-filled work, and thereby distinguishing itself among a body of work that more typically deals with death and tragedy, it is probably the most accessible of his films. Based on the memoirs of André Devigny, a World War II prisoner of war, as well as informed by the director’s own year-long imprisonment by the Nazis for his role in the French Resistance, the film tracks the arrest, incarceration and subsequent escape of a man known only as Fontaine. Although the film rarely strays from his protagonist’s tiny cell over the course of its 99 minutes, its grip on the audience (or, at least on the Guru) remains firm because Bresson makes Fontaine’s arduous journey as much a spiritual one as it is physical. Rebuffed in his attempts to enlist fellow prisoners who are – by turns – already defeated, fatally impatient, or simply unbelieving – Bresson’s hero perseveres with an unwavering faith in the path he has chosen, thereby implicating not just his life but his soul in his plan’s outcome. Although ultimately rewarded – and, mind you, the Guru is not giving anything away here that the film’s title doesn’t already tell you – Fontaine’s faith is memorably tested in the film’s final section, when an unexpected change in circumstances threatens his plan, forcing him to not only hold true to that plan but to make a leap of faith in another human being. Although the Guru is not usually one for hyperbole, this passage is as riveting and exhilarating a piece of filmmaking as you are likely to see anywhere.

Looking back on A Man Escaped, it seems clear to the Guru that Bresson – whose work was always infused by his Catholicism – has purposely crafted his hero to be viewed as a Christ-like figure. And, indeed, perhaps the director’s reliance on such symbolism is the driving factor behind the distaste others have for him. The Guru can relate. In the past, gifted directors as diverse as Ingmar Bergman (Persona) and Terence Malick (The Thin Red Line) have given him fits with what seemed to him to be too heavy a hand. So then, why does Bresson work? Books have been written about him – and the Guru is anxious to start exploring those – but, for him, there is something so pure, so rigorous about both Bresson’s style and moral compass that transports him in the way that film should. Although he is fully aware that the director won’t be for everyone, he encourages his more adventurous readers – should they be craving something different – to seek out A Man Escaped.

The Gay Guru of Cinema’s Final Grade: A Man Escaped = A

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A Little Night Music

August 13, 2010 by raschuette

The Gay Guru of Cinema recently swapped his cinematic cap for a musical theater one and hit the Walter Kerr Theater for a matinee of A Little Night Music, the first-ever Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1973 award-laden musical comedy about the romantic entanglements ensnaring several couples in turn-of-the-century Sweden. The revival made news recently, of course, with the announcement that two formidable interpreters of Mr. Sondheim’s songs, Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch, would be replacing Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, the original stars of the production. The fact that both women had originated roles in other Sondheim shows – Ms. Peters twice in Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods, Ms. Stritch in Company – only heightened the Guru’s anticipation.

Two questions were front and center in the Guru’s mind that day. No, not where he and his friends would adjourn afterwards for cocktails. Rather, had the production improved over time from the problematic one he had seen last winter? And, most obviously, was the promise inherent in the new casting fulfilled?

Before getting to those answers, if you will allow the Guru a few moments to rail against the onslaught of these “stripped down” revivals, of which Music is just one recent example. Now, the Guru is fully aware that the current economic climate on Broadway is such that it’s unlikely that audiences will be seeing a full-scale production of any Sondheim show in the foreseeable future. As such, he is genuinely grateful just for the opportunity to see Music. But he also knows that it isn’t impossible for a pared-down piece to work. Just two seasons ago, a transcendent revival of the aforementioned Sunday in the Park with George left the Guru in a puddle of tears on not one, but two, occasions. No, what gnaws at the Guru is the nagging suspicion that many of this new breed of musical exist not because of a director’s artistic vision but, rather, as a sop to financially reticent producers.

And, sadly, it feels as though that’s the case here. While he can envision this Music working as an intimate chamber piece at London’s Chocolate Menier Factory – the 180-seat theater where it originated – the Guru doesn’t think that its creative team has fleshed it out sufficiently for its Broadway home. Peering at the stage through the darkness, he had to remind himself – on more than one occasion – that he wasn’t simply staring at the contents of an underused storage locker.

The Gay Guru, however, could forgive, if somewhat begrudgingly, Music’s minimalist set design if the actors orbiting around it offered a compelling reason to do so. But, last December, during the final week of previews, not all of Music’s cast members seemed in sync, as if some were still trying to find their footing around Sondheim’s intricate rhymes. As a result, the show’s pace suffered, with certain scenes firing on all cylinders while others simply sputtered. As the Guru loves a useful analogy, one could have perhaps likened the show to a case of mismatched champagne, offering up a sparkling Dom Pérignon one moment only to be followed by a flat Asti Spumante the next. And, as most of my readers can probably surmise, just thinking about the latter is enough to cause the Guru to convulse violently.

Fortunately, the leading ladies of that first incarnation of Music were more than capable of doing their share of heavy lifting. Angela Lansbury, the 84-year-old Broadway legend who scored one of her greatest triumphs (as well as one of her five Tonys) as the demonic Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim’s masterpiece Sweeney Todd more than three decades ago, may or may not have rung down the curtain on her brilliant theatrical career with her performance as Madame Armfeldt, the wise but world-weary mother of Zeta-Jones’ Desiree. If this is, in fact, the last time that Ms. Lansbury graced the Great White Way, she surely exited the theater’s stage door that final night with head held high. For, while she tripped up slightly over the tricky wordplay of Liaisons, her character’s signature number, at the performance the Guru attended, nowhere else did Ms. Lansbury offer the slightest evidence to suggest that she had lost either her justly famous comic timing or her ability to convey heartbreak through a simple turn of phrase.

The question surrounding Ms. Zeta-Jones, on the other hand, is not whether, at 40, she’ll be physically able to return to Broadway but whether, having pocketed a Tony Award her first time out of the gate, she’ll ever want to. Rightly or wrongly, Ms. Zeta-Jones has always struck the Guru as more an opportunist than actress. Perfectly pleasant in her breakout film, The Mask of Zorro, clearly out of her depth among the ensemble in the Oscar-winning Traffic, she captured her own Oscar just two years later by shrewdly playing category fraud with a perfectly-good-but-hardly-great performance in Chicago. Since then, she’s made a handful of mostly forgettable movies while earning millions shilling for T-Mobile.

If she never does return, it would be a pity because, for the first time in the Guru’s memory, Zeta-Jones, the actress, reached across that invisible divide and connected with him. There are better singers – and we’ll get to one shortly – but, in her rendition of Send in the Clowns, Sondheim’s most well-known song and one of Broadway’s legitimately great “eleven o’clock numbers,” she was achingly vulnerable. The palpable sensuality she brought to Desiree was no surprise – it’s her stock in trade after all – but this softness was a most welcome revelation. Will we ever see this side of her again? It’s anybody’s guess.

A not-so-pleasant revelation, as the Guru now turns his attention back to his most recent visit to the Walter Kerr, is that the still-in-place ensemble seems incapable of or, worse, uninterested in righting this ship. (Or could it possibly be that they just disagree with the Guru and don’t think there’s a damn thing wrong with it?) So what more is there for him to say about the production itself? Only that his woes on this particular Saturday were multiplied by the absence of Aaron Lazar from the cast. The lone stand-out from Music’s ensemble the first time around, his comic and boisterous portrait of Carl-Magnus, Desiree’s arrogant younger lover, is helped in no small measure by a gorgeous baritone. Of course, neither did the fact that Mr. Lazar is quite easy on the eyes go unnoticed by your ever vigilant Guru.

Tucking the cast change announcement back into his playbill, and setting aside his disappointment, the Guru settled into his seat. Once the curtain rose and it became clear that the ensemble was not going to deliver anything new, his focus turned to Ms. Peters and Ms. Stritch. Three hours later, when the house lights came up for the final time, the Guru could only pronounce the producers’ casting coup a qualified success. Yes, both ladies are in fine vocal form, each delivering her character’s signature number in her trademark style, Ms. Peters giving Clowns a steely delicacy while Ms. Stritch, at 84, laces Liaisons with the same acerbic gusto she brought almost 40 years ago to The Ladies Who Lunch, arguably the greatest interpretation of any of Mr. Sondheim’s songs. No, the Guru’s major problem with these lovely ladies is that whoever was running them through their paces in rehearsal did not see fit to rein them in whenever they’re not singing.

While he supposes an argument could be made for Desiree being played as broadly as Ms. Peters plays her, no such argument exists for Madame Armfeldt. In fact, it’s the very antithesis of Liaisons, her lament to the lost art of subtlety and discretion. As she amply demonstrated a few years back in her acclaimed one-woman show At Liberty, Ms. Stritch can wring incredible poignancy from the quietest of moments. And she has many such moments here which is why it’s all the more disappointing when she feels it necessary to play to the back row.

Another such moment arrives late in the evening, this time courtesy of Ms. Peters, whose shimmering rendition of Send in the Clowns proves it’s a song that – if you will excuse the cliché – she was born to sing. If only the Guru could be convinced that Desiree is a part she was born to play. Alas, just as in her last Broadway outing in Sam Mendes’ ill-conceived revival of Gypsy in 2003, Ms. Peters has taken on a role that simply doesn’t suit her. Inside the actress’ petite frame, the larger-than-life Desiree, like the larger-than-life Mama Rose before her, comes across as merely and irritatingly hammy.

Ultimately, the Guru is a bit sad that Broadway, having waited 36 years for its return, cannot lay claim to a new, one-for-the-ages production of one of Sondheim’s greatest works. After such a long wait, it deserved one. Still, while they deserved a better vehicle, the memories created by Mses. Zeta Jones, Lansbury, Peters, and Stritch will linger on long after this revival’s final curtain falls. Those alone are worth the price of admission.

The Gay Guru of Cinema’s Final Grades for A Little Night Music

Cast #1 = B

Cast #2 = C+

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Nosferatu

August 6, 2010 by raschuette

It may come as a shock to those who know him, but the Gay Guru of Cinema does, on occasion, find himself with not much to say about a movie. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he is feeling ungenerous towards it. It’s just that some titles simply don’t stir up the creative juices. Such appears to be the case with Nosferatu, the unauthorized 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which just kicked off the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s two-month celebration of vampire cinema.

First off, let it be known that while the Guru is no aficionado of this particular subset of movie, neither is he philosophically opposed to the idea of enjoying a little cinematic bloodletting now and then. Indeed, he recalls rather enjoying himself back in the day at both Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark and Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, two films that are part of BAM’s current schedule. (While it would be interesting to see whether those films hold up, their screening dates, sadly, fall during the Guru’s much-needed vacation which will place him a few thousand miles away from BAM.)

Rather, the problem between the Guru and the vampire picture is that it is — more often than not — the province of hacks whose films share, seemingly without fail, two lethal traits, needless noise and narrative incoherence. Simply put, for every Near Dark there are a dozen or more Blades. As such, the latest entry in this sweepstakes — the Twilight series — is, apart from Taylor Lautner’s chiseled abs, conspicuously off the Guru’s radar and likely to remain there. No, the Gay Guru ventured forth on a sultry August evening for different reasons.

First, Nosferatu landed on the Guru’s Sight & Sound list thus allowing him to continue his self-appointed cinematic quest to seek out all 272 titles on the big screen.  Second, and more importantly, Nosferatu is the work of F.W. Murnau, the German director responsible for Sunrise, widely regarded as the greatest of all silent films. Next to Sunrise, Nosferatu certainly feels like the work of an artist learning his craft. While Murnau would become renowned for his moving camera, here his camera is often static while he experiments with dissolves and other techniques. Still, there are moments — a procession of coffins carried down a city street, a pensive woman sitting by the sea — that clearly demonstrate the director’s eye for composition and hint at the glories to come a few years later.

As there is much to admire, the Guru doesn’t want to be too hard on the film. Ironically, his main issue with it is one that seems to plague all celluloid renditions of this tale. Namely, that until it arrives at the homestead of its titular bloodsucker, the film is a bit of a slog. The good news is that, given its brief running time of 85 minutes, it’s not too long until we reach Count Orlok, a name change dictated by the inability of Murnau to obtain the rights to Stoker’s novel. As played by the German actor Max Schreck, and as visualized by Murnau, Orlok’s cadaver-like visage has long since become iconic to even the most casual of moviegoers and is enough, on its own, to make Nosferatu a must-see for anyone serious about cinema as an art form.

The Gay Guru of Cinema’s Final Grade for Nosferatu = B+

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Notorious

July 30, 2010 by raschuette

If you will excuse the Gay Guru of Cinema a brief moment so that he may provide his readers with a wee bit of background for this particular post.  Once a decade, the British film monthly Sight & Sound publishes a highly-regarded “Top 10” poll – voted on by a large roster of both critics and directors – a barometer if you will of the current cinematic climate.  While a journey through all of the films that earned votes in 2002 – the year of the most recent poll – was simply impossible, the Gay Guru, after establishing certain, yet completely arbitrary, criteria has managed to whittle the list down to a mere 272 films.

Scouring the local repertory calendars, the Guru was ecstatic when he realized that the first notch on this particular belt would be Notorious, one of five Hitchcock films that garnered enough support to make his cut-off.  Alfred Hitchcock has, of course, been elevated into many a cinephile’s pantheon and the Guru is no different.  Even in his misfires – and Hitch certainly had his fair share – there is always something happening, thematically and/or visually, to hold the viewer’s interest.

Certainly, Notorious has both in spades.  So much has already been written about the film – the unflinching sadomasochistic nature of the Grant/Bergman relationship, the astonishing subtleness with which Hitchcock transfers an audience’s sympathy to his doomed villain (a superb Claude Rains), the pitch-perfect performances of the film’s entire cast – that  the Guru was a bit stumped as to where to take this particular post.  Perhaps he could applaud the good taste of the 200 or so people who made the day’s first screening a sell-out.  On the other hand, if he was feeling particularly cranky, he could excoriate BAM for allowing such a damaged print to unspool in its theater.  It saddens the Guru terribly to see such a thing, no more so than in the case of one of the country’s national treasures, a sentiment borne out by Notorious’ 2006 induction into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.

But determined not to dwell on the negative, the Guru’s thoughts turn to Ingrid.  Often better than her material, at the time of Notorious’ 1946 release she was four years removed from Casablanca – her most famous role – and two years removed from an Oscar for her exquisite turn in Gaslight.  Yet, her performance here is even better, her Alicia Huberman a more complex creature than either her iconic Ilsa, the woman who unlocks Bogie’s heart, or her Paula, the timid wife being driven mad by a nefarious Charles Boyer.  By turns theatrical, tremulous, cynical, vulnerable, and heart-breaking, Bergman smoothly navigates each shift in Alicia’s volatile emotional terrain.  Although she didn’t score an Oscar nomination that year – not surprising, really, given how Hollywood always viewed Hitch’s films as mere “entertainments” – her long career would see two more Oscars come her way.  Yet, the Guru is steadfast in his belief that she was never better than in this glorious triptych of films, and that her Alicia is its crown jewel.  A performance for the ages in a film for the ages.  For the Gay Guru, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Lest he be accused of playing favorites, the Guru must also acknowledge the invaluable contribution of Mr. Grant to the film’s success.  The astute critic David Thomson has called him the greatest of actors and there may just be something to that.  For, if we’re being honest, has there really ever been another actor who could so effortlessly craft a character such as Devlin, an emotionally-stunted man with a capacity for tenderness that’s equaled only by his capacity for cruelty?  Obviously, Hitch saw that in him and used Grant, to great effect, in four of his films.  From the dark depths of Suspicion and Notorious to the light-hearted lark of To Catch a Thief and, finally, to their comic thriller North by Northwest.  In the end, among actors, only another legend – Jimmy Stewart – would have as fruitful a relationship with the director.

Now, before leaving the building, the Gay Guru would like to address the question of genre, his eye having caught the film’s rather surprising inclusion in the new edition of the Film Noir Encyclopedia.  While he appreciates the effort put into this terrific new resource, the Guru must protest Notorious’ place in it.  While he will have more to say about the concept of noir in later posts, the films of that genre must – at their most basic level – revolve around protagonists who are not firmly rooted in a moral universe, whose sense of right and wrong is, for whatever reason, out of alignment.  That’s just not the case here.  Yes, Bergman and Grant treat each other badly but their emotional abuse of one another is self-contained.  Ben Hecht’s Oscar-nominated screenplay never intimates that Alicia and Devlin’s larger worldview and, therefore, their ultimate goal – here, the thwarting of a Nazi plot in Rio de Janeiro – has been compromised by their personal frailties.

No, Notorious, like the director’s Vertigo 12 years later, is first and foremost a perverse pas de deux between two damaged souls dressed up in the trappings of a stylish thriller.  Indeed, the dysfunctional relationship between the sexes was one of Hitch’s favorite themes and is present, to varying degrees, in all five of his films that found support in the Sight & Sound poll, with Psycho, Rear Window and the aforementioned North by Northwest and Vertigo completing that anointed quintet.  From its Fall schedule, the Guru knows that a restored print of Psycho will be screening at New York’s Film Forum this October in honor of its 50th anniversary.  It should come as no surprise to his readers that he is already salivating at the thought.

The Gay Guru of Cinema’s Final Grade: Notorious = A+

Posted in In The Library, The Music of the Night, The Pantheon, The Sound & The Fury | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

I Am Love

July 21, 2010 by raschuette

The Gay Guru of Cinema melted this past Sunday when – on a hellishly hot day here in the Big Apple – he ventured into Manhattan from the comfort of his air conditioned Brooklyn apartment for a screening of I Am Love – the new Italian film starring Tilda Swinton – at Lincoln Plaza, a gay man lost amidst an ocean of blue-haired Upper West Side ladies who are that particular moviehouse’s most common denizens.

The movie had popped up on the Guru’s gaydar when one of his favorite critics, the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, in her largely favorable review of the film last month, bandied about the name of Douglas Sirk.  Now, as his most film-conscious friends can attest to, the Guru literally swoons at the mere mention of Monsieur Sirk, that maestro of such 1950s melodrama masterworks as All That Heaven Allows, Imitation of Life, There’s Always Tomorrow, and Written on the Wind.  And, here, with I Am Love’s extraordinary extended opening scene – an elegant birthday party for a family’s dying patriarch – its director’s Sirkian attention to the lavish details of an Italian family’s upper-class existence bears out Ms. Dargis’ shout out.

Moreover, the full-throttled melodrama that ensues – wherein Ms. Swinton, the family’s matriarch, plunges headfirst into an affair with one of those younger, “in tune with nature” men that always seem to materialize in these films – is yet another variation on the Wyman/Hudson romance in the aforementioned All That Heaven Allows.  Of course, Jane and Rock never quite got it on the way the two lovebirds here do – in the idyllic Italian countryside no less – leaving nothing to the Guru’s imagination, and leaving him to also wonder about those blue-haired denizens in the audience.  Were they sitting there in the dark, lips pursed together in disapproval?  Or, more to the Guru’s liking, were they perhaps fondly recalling – like Maggie Smith’s Aunt Charlotte in A Room with a View – an “adventure” of their own from a long-vanished youth?

While the Guru will never know the answer to those questions, he will appreciate any filmmaker – in this case, director Luca Guadagnino – who can turn his thoughts to Sirk.  Yet, he also realizes that any film must, at the end of that proverbial day, stand on its own.  And, while the Guru encourages his readers to seek out I Am Love, a rare example of intelligent filmmaking during Hollywood’s annual summer onslaught of mindless sequels and wannabe blockbusters, he would be remiss were he not to report that, following a very strong opening, the film’s middle becomes a bit muddled with a multitude of plot threads sewn into the film’s narrative that mainly serve to distract the viewer.  While the film does finish with a flourish in its final act, coming full circle to yet another dinner party and the tragic consequences that flow from a well-intentioned choice of the soup to be served, there’s still that muddle in the middle which, on more than one occasion, left the Guru scratching his head trying to sort through its strands.

Yet another issue, this one more serious, that the Guru feels necessary to take with the film – and the primary reason his reaction to it is one of admiration more than enthusiasm – is that the ultimate choice the Swinton character makes, while believable in terms of the film’s exquisitely rendered mise en scene – is more difficult for the Guru to resolve on a purely emotional level.  Please indulge the Guru one last time as he hearkens back to All That Heaven Allows, needing only to recall how Sirk brilliantly encapsulates Jane Wyman’s emotional dilemma in the justly famous sequence when her grown children present their widowed mother with a television set, blithely suggesting to her that this woeful substitute could somehow equal human companionship.

No such scene exists in I Am Love and, without it, the film becomes a more difficult sell.  In truth, the Guru never really sensed that Ms. Swinton’s character was in any way unhappy with her privileged life or that her children or husband ever truly disappointed her.  Did he miss those moments when flickers of disappointment crossed that alabaster face?  Did he miss the wounded hurt in those piercing eyes?  Or is it that Ms. Swinton – clearly an accomplished actress – is simply unable to generate anything resembling warmth for this particular cinephile?  Certainly, the Guru will take another look at the film and Ms. Swinton when it invariably wends its way to Blu-ray but, for now:

The Gay Guru of Cinema’s Rating:  B+

Posted in Now Playing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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