Jingoistic propaganda film of opulent, gorgeous tableaux heightened by Prokofiev's music and Eisenstein's pompous geometric assertion. Here Eisenstein starts moving away from his usual montage-based cinema of association, juxtaposition and intellectual craftwork, and starts leaning towards a cinema more concerned by the geometry within the frame, cutting less and letting these big canvases architect the film's momentum. I think he is mostly successful at it, as the more static, declamatory nature of the actors, who can often be a bit…
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The Sweet East 2023
Contemporary Americana kaleidoscope. Really loved the experience of following Ryder in her Alice In Wonderland picaresque odyssey, and Price Williams does a good job at giving the beautiful 16 mm textures a powerful driving force and an engaging propulsion, inspiredly meshing an on the nose naturalism with sheer artifice, helped by Pinkerton’s funny universe of well shaped characters and the very enthralling manifold sound design. The last episode is definitely weaker than the preceding film so it unfortunately ends with…
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Where Is the Friend's House? 1987
one of the most diligent films ever made, a painstaking coming of age odyssey with an incredibly expansive symbology: everything here is absolutely essential, a boy whose back hurts because he needs to help his father by carrying milk, some brownish red pants, a gust of wind in the backyard, the windows' reflex on the walls... it's all very potent, these signs aren't there for mere narrative development, they address a much bigger spectrum where politics, economics and metaphysics collide.…
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The Boy and the Heron 2023
Water is katabasis, fire is anabasis, stone is basis. How to reestablish faith in reality through dreams: by living and forgetting them. Imagine how much love you must have in your heart in order to open a door that will burn your skin alive every time, just so a person you love might open another one with the hope of a better world. The matter of the world that we use to love is the same one we use to hurt - it all depends on how you make use of it. A film by someone who understands both love and pain.