(Today is Bloomsday and, as a tribute, this edition of Five-Star Streaming will examine a movie that is actually set on Bloomsday, as a reference to the compressed timeline and digressive structure it shares with Joyce's Ulysses. Enjoy!)
Before Sunrise
USA, 1995
Directed by Richard Linklater
What it's about:
A twenty-something American man named Jesse (Ethan Hawke) meets a twenty-something French woman named Celine (Julie Delpy) on a long-distance European train. He convinces her to get off the train with him in Vienna and spend an evening together, with the caveat that they will both be leaving in the morning and will, in all likelihood, never meet again. The two walk around the city, discussing ideas big and small in a stream-of-consciousness style conversation that sees them gradually opening up to each other and themselves.
Context:
In 1995, Richard Linklater was still primarily known for Dazed and Confused (1993) and his ground-breaking Slacker (1991). On the heels of those films, Before Sunrise helped cement his reputation as both a maverick indie auteur and a chronicler of Generation X's aimless, unfocused energy. This was still a time, remember, when the mainstream legitimacy of independent cinema hadn't yet been proven. Pulp Fiction had fired one of the first modern indie salvos to rattle the establishment, and that had only been released the previous year. The Oscar ceremony often referred to as "the Year of the Independents," when films like Fargo, Shine, and Secrets and Lies broke into the Best Picture category, wouldn't happen for another year. So Before Sunrise, with its drifting, unconventional "plot," wasn't exactly conforming to a well-established mold the way today's "indie" movies (mostly backed by subsidiaries of the large studios) seem to do. Even today, it would be a gutsy move to make a film that, essentially, consists of two people walking and talking and not much else.
Why You Should Watch:
I can't pretend this is a movie for everyone. Linklater and Kim Krizan's often-improvised "script" is full of the kinds of capital-R Romantic notions and undergrad philosophy that stoned twenty-somethings often use to impress each other (a lot like Linklater's later Waking Life [2001]). There's no real story to speak of, at least not in terms of big incidents or familiar narrative patterns. I can easily grasp how some people might consider this a rambling wankfest and be quite turned off to it before it even gets started.
But if you can get past that, there is a great sincerity and wonder buried just below the surface. This is a film about what makes us learn about ourselves, what makes us grow as people. The answer Before Sunrise seems to propose is getting outside of our comfort zones and connecting with other people, even if just for a night. Jesse and Celine go from strangers to something much, much more in the course of their evening together, and you get the feeling that they have been forever changed by the experience. This is the sort of transformative experience we all dream about, in our heart of hearts, whenever we travel. It's a tribute to the spirit of all of those times we've thought about doing something different, something radical or brave or unexpected, only to say no and turn, out of fear, back to our humdrum lives. Before Sunrise is a movie about embracing that possibility, embracing openness as an agent for change, and just putting it all out there, come what may.
If you can at all sympathize with that perspective, or if you've ever traveled alone to a foreign country, or even if you feel like you've lost something of the honesty and optimism of youth, this film might speak to you. Hawke and Delpy are charmingly, utterly convincing in their roles, and make the occasionally-complicated dialog feel natural. And while the look of the film declares it to be very much a product of the '90s, its thematic content is timeless. As long as people still feel trapped by the roles modern society leaves open to them, as long as people look in the mirror and wonder, "What if...?", Before Sunrise will be relevant.
(As a side note, Before Sunrise's sequel, Before Sunset, is also available for streaming. If you enjoy the first one, you'll definitely want to watch the second, which does more of the same but somehow still manages to steal your heart.)
Watch this if you like:
Trivial discussions that feel profound, travel, European cinema, Lost in Translation, having a romantic side, well-defined characters, self-discovery, Eric Rohmer
Five-Star Streaming is an occasional feature championing great movies available to be streamed from Netflix. As of each post's date, the film under discussion was listed as streaming on Netflix's Watch Instantly service in the US. However, due to the volatile nature of licensing rights, I can't always know how long a particular selection will be available, so you'd better watch each film while you can!
Showing posts with label FSS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FSS. Show all posts
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Five-Star Streaming #1: Le Corbeau
Le Corbeau (The Raven)
France, 1943
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot
What It's About:
A small French village is terrorized by a series of increasingly-personal poison pen letters, mysteriously signed by Le Corbeau (the Raven). The letters make vicious, scandalous, and often quite accurate accusations about the townfolk, leading to an air of paranoia, mistrust, and suspicion regarding Le Corbeau's true identity.
Context:
Le Corbeau was released by a German production company while France was still occupied. This led a lot of people to wonder if Clouzot was a collaborator, or if the film's themes were somehow anti-French. On the same token, the climate of suspicion and incrimination that the film presents could be interpreted as being anti-Occupation, and this didn't exactly endear Clouzot to the Nazis or the Vichy government, either. The film was a black mark on Clouzot, and derailed his promising career for years after the war. Only in subsequent years, seen removed from the heated WWII climate in which it was released and taken with the rest of the great films (The Wages of Fear, Les Diaboliques) of Clouzot's canon, did Le Corbeau receive a well-deserved boost to its reputation.
Why You Should Watch:
Le Corbeau is a great film because of the way Clouzot milks tension out of every frame. It is dark, brooding, and—as is often remarked about Clouzot's films in general—admirably Hitchcockian in its use of suspense. But, as the contemporary argument over the film's intentions demonstrates, it's got a subtlety and depth generally unseen in Occupation-era films. Le Corbeau wrestles with the gap between our private lives and public faces, as Le Corbeau's letters reveal bourgeois convention for the fiction that it is. It's not an easy film to figure out, in terms of "who did it" and why, and a lot of this has to do with Clouzot's skill at manipulating your emotions and attention throughout the film. And, as Alan Williams notes (caution, spoilers!), the film neatly bridges the gap between the earlier poetic realism and what would later come to be called film noir.
Mostly, the film works as a combination of cautionary tale and social criticism. It is a parable, in a way, that could easily be tweaked to fit other social/historical circumstances—post-9/11, post–Patriot Act America springs to mind. And, more than anything else, the film asks questions and shows potential answers without being overly-didactic, allowing you to come to your own conclusions about its message. Yet despite all of this serious baggage, and even though humanity doesn't exactly come out of it smelling like roses, Le Corbeau is still an entertaining, engrossing, enjoyable film to watch.
Watch This If You Like:
Hitchcock, suspense, crime thrillers, Se7en, classic noir, Haneke, 1984, Chabrol, upsetting the social order, pessimism, psychodrama
Five-Star Streaming is an occasional feature championing great movies available to be streamed from Netflix. As of each post's date, the film under discussion was listed as streaming on Netflix's Watch Instantly service in the US. However, due to the volatile nature of licensing rights, I can't always know how long a particular selection will be available, so you'd better watch each film while you can!
France, 1943
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot
What It's About:
A small French village is terrorized by a series of increasingly-personal poison pen letters, mysteriously signed by Le Corbeau (the Raven). The letters make vicious, scandalous, and often quite accurate accusations about the townfolk, leading to an air of paranoia, mistrust, and suspicion regarding Le Corbeau's true identity.
Context:
Le Corbeau was released by a German production company while France was still occupied. This led a lot of people to wonder if Clouzot was a collaborator, or if the film's themes were somehow anti-French. On the same token, the climate of suspicion and incrimination that the film presents could be interpreted as being anti-Occupation, and this didn't exactly endear Clouzot to the Nazis or the Vichy government, either. The film was a black mark on Clouzot, and derailed his promising career for years after the war. Only in subsequent years, seen removed from the heated WWII climate in which it was released and taken with the rest of the great films (The Wages of Fear, Les Diaboliques) of Clouzot's canon, did Le Corbeau receive a well-deserved boost to its reputation.
Why You Should Watch:
Le Corbeau is a great film because of the way Clouzot milks tension out of every frame. It is dark, brooding, and—as is often remarked about Clouzot's films in general—admirably Hitchcockian in its use of suspense. But, as the contemporary argument over the film's intentions demonstrates, it's got a subtlety and depth generally unseen in Occupation-era films. Le Corbeau wrestles with the gap between our private lives and public faces, as Le Corbeau's letters reveal bourgeois convention for the fiction that it is. It's not an easy film to figure out, in terms of "who did it" and why, and a lot of this has to do with Clouzot's skill at manipulating your emotions and attention throughout the film. And, as Alan Williams notes (caution, spoilers!), the film neatly bridges the gap between the earlier poetic realism and what would later come to be called film noir.
Mostly, the film works as a combination of cautionary tale and social criticism. It is a parable, in a way, that could easily be tweaked to fit other social/historical circumstances—post-9/11, post–Patriot Act America springs to mind. And, more than anything else, the film asks questions and shows potential answers without being overly-didactic, allowing you to come to your own conclusions about its message. Yet despite all of this serious baggage, and even though humanity doesn't exactly come out of it smelling like roses, Le Corbeau is still an entertaining, engrossing, enjoyable film to watch.
Watch This If You Like:
Hitchcock, suspense, crime thrillers, Se7en, classic noir, Haneke, 1984, Chabrol, upsetting the social order, pessimism, psychodrama
Five-Star Streaming is an occasional feature championing great movies available to be streamed from Netflix. As of each post's date, the film under discussion was listed as streaming on Netflix's Watch Instantly service in the US. However, due to the volatile nature of licensing rights, I can't always know how long a particular selection will be available, so you'd better watch each film while you can!
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Feature Unlocked!
(I probably could have just tossed this info into the previous post, but oh well)
Look, I'm a Netflix fanboy. This should come as no surprise, now that I've shared my obsessive Netflixing habits with you all, but it just needs to be said. Netflix and other disc-by-mail/streaming services are exactly what I dreamed of as a kid. They bring Patton Oswalt's ETEWAF (Everything That Ever Was, Available Forever) one step closer to reality, for better or for worse.
But there's an awful lot of content out there. It can be pretty tough to figure out what to watch, even with Netflix's generally-decent algorithms—they almost always know what I'm going to rate a movie, though they've not yet figured out which movies I'll actually want to watch. Even then, their accuracy is only even that high because I rent and rate so many movies, movies that I learned about elsewhere without the benefit of an algorithm. Maybe you aren't so obsessive with your Netflixing, or don't have a background that allows you to say you wrote a Master's thesis about Snakes on a Plane.
So that's where I come in!
Every so often, I'm going to look through the things that are currently available on Netflix Instant and find examples of movies that I think everyone should see. This new feature will be called "Five-Star Streaming," or "FSS" for short. I'm somewhat stingy with my five-star ratings when it comes to films, so these may not always be genuine five-star selections. But they'll definitely be movies that are well worth your time and effort, whether you stream them, rent them, or acquire them by other means.
This helps me further my mission of telling people about interesting, thought-provoking, or just plain fun movies. It also lets me draw from my knowledge of movies I haven't just watched and returned, so that my posts won't always be dependent on maintaining a quick turnover. And it lets you know about some great films just waiting for you to click play. It's a win-win for everyone!
Look out for the first FSS post sometime this week. I've already got a few movies in mind!
Look, I'm a Netflix fanboy. This should come as no surprise, now that I've shared my obsessive Netflixing habits with you all, but it just needs to be said. Netflix and other disc-by-mail/streaming services are exactly what I dreamed of as a kid. They bring Patton Oswalt's ETEWAF (Everything That Ever Was, Available Forever) one step closer to reality, for better or for worse.
But there's an awful lot of content out there. It can be pretty tough to figure out what to watch, even with Netflix's generally-decent algorithms—they almost always know what I'm going to rate a movie, though they've not yet figured out which movies I'll actually want to watch. Even then, their accuracy is only even that high because I rent and rate so many movies, movies that I learned about elsewhere without the benefit of an algorithm. Maybe you aren't so obsessive with your Netflixing, or don't have a background that allows you to say you wrote a Master's thesis about Snakes on a Plane.
So that's where I come in!
Every so often, I'm going to look through the things that are currently available on Netflix Instant and find examples of movies that I think everyone should see. This new feature will be called "Five-Star Streaming," or "FSS" for short. I'm somewhat stingy with my five-star ratings when it comes to films, so these may not always be genuine five-star selections. But they'll definitely be movies that are well worth your time and effort, whether you stream them, rent them, or acquire them by other means.
This helps me further my mission of telling people about interesting, thought-provoking, or just plain fun movies. It also lets me draw from my knowledge of movies I haven't just watched and returned, so that my posts won't always be dependent on maintaining a quick turnover. And it lets you know about some great films just waiting for you to click play. It's a win-win for everyone!
Look out for the first FSS post sometime this week. I've already got a few movies in mind!
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