Zulawski orgy roundup part 3: Without you, I wouldn't feel anything at all

(Image: Smashbox Studios)

(My previous entries on BAM Rose Cinema's Andrzej Zulawski series can be found here, here and here.)


Sometimes you have to go crazy to tell the truth. A scene early in Possession (1981) finds Sam Neill as a betrayed and estranged husband, camped out in rented quarters, red-eyed, unshaven and grimy in sweat-soaked, days-old clothes. He thrashes about on his bed like an inconsolable toddler, calls his wife but can't speak, and careens around his room and down the corridor, running into walls, collapsing on the floor, flailing and moaning like a wounded animal - in other words, embodying the Zulawski hero par excellence.


Somewhere in the course of this tableau, I recalled my own experience of bottom-of-the-barrel romantic despair, the worst days and weeks of a dysfunctional relationship close to a decade ago. And I realized that this was exactly how I felt at the time - that the only reason I didn't indulge myself similarly was my deep-seated commitment to certain norms of civilized behavior, and my network of patiently supportive friends and family. Also, I had to go to work. But if I could have gotten away with it, I would have approximated Neill's performance. With that thought, the distance between myself and the alien being on the screen collapsed into an identification as close as that with a twin brother. The filmmaker's world not only made sense to me - it became, at least briefly, my world. Never did I see more clearly that in his own way he's trying to be quite direct - by clearing away the masks of conventional expression to expose raw emotions and naked psyches. 

Zulawski orgy roundup part 2: By the light of the silvery moon

(Image: Panopticum)

(My previous entries on BAM Rose Cinema's Andrzej Zulawski series can be found here and here.)


Anybody who takes the time and trouble to be an enthusiast in any field has their holy grails, their tantalizing unattainables. It's like the grown-up geek's version of an ever-receding Christmas morning, where the anticipation of getting is in some ways better than the actual thing. Maybe it's the out-of-print live album, or the uncensored first publication; the baseball card with the misspelled name, or the suppressed and unfinished Polish religio-mystical science fiction epic nightmare.


To cut to the chase, last month I finally saw On the Silver Globe (1977/1988), nine years after first reading about it in Film Comment. And it was only somewhere between 30 and 40 percent a disappointment. That would be the tediously and pretentiously talky part. The other 60 to 70 percent is the surreal, synapse-frying kinda-masterpiece I was promised. Which is more than enough to make it worth seeking out if getting synapses fried is your thing.

Zulawski orgy roundup part 1: The Important Thing Is To Use Lots of Parentheses

"Funny how? I mean, funny like a clown? I amuse you?"
L to R: Fabio Testi, Romy Schneider, Jacques Dutronc
(Image: Greencine)

BAM Rose Cinema's current Andrzej Zulawski series has been a lesson in how much of a difference context makes in the experience of viewing movies (or experiencing any art or entertainment). If I casually watched any one of these films on its own, I would probably react less kindly than I've been inclined to, as ridiculous and arguably pretentious as they often are. Immersion in the director's unique style has done a lot to acclimate me to its initially off-putting aspects (as they say, if you put a frog in a pan on the stove and gradually expose it to Zulawski movies... something something). 

But I'm also affected by extra-cinematic influences, as most people are, whether they admit it or not. The abundant, often breathless coverage of the series in the press and online (again, see Mubi's roundup of links), positioning him as an underappreciated genius auteur finally getting his due, makes me want to like them. All these other people are so excited - I want to be excited, too. And I am, up to a point, but then I shake my head vigorously and slap my face like a movie character staving off hallucination - notice I'm sounding more sober than I did when I wrote this entry in a post-screening buzz after L'Amour Braque (about which more later), not to mention a haze of late-night, mid-week exhaustion.

Take The Important Thing is to Love (1975), Zulawski's first of several French productions (he he wasn't terribly welcome in his native Poland as far as the authorities were concerned). If I'd stumbled across this deeply strange and inconsistent love story on TV, I'd have probably watched with a quizzically tilted head and squinted eyes for a half-hour or so, and then turned it off, briefly arching my eyebrow as I walked away. But in the event, I was primed to expect certain qualities and to tolerate and even embrace certain quirks, so I was able to get something out of it and even sometimes enjoy it. It's not my favorite Zulawski by a long shot, but it's an interesting beast. 

Shout, shout, let it all out: The primal scream of Andrzej Zulawski

Really, what can I tell you about Andrzej Zulawski's films? Or even about how to pronounce his name?...

Now, that's just uncalled for. I can at least try.




Easy part first: ON-jay zhoo-WAHV-ski. Roughly. (Thanks to this quite informative fan site for confirmation on that.)


Now, about those films. Um...


Well.

Does everyone care about Uncle Boonmee? Should everyone?

(Image courtesy of Kick the Machine and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's blog)

In his rave review in the current issue of Film Comment magazine, Chuck Stephens makes the rather remarkable statement that "everybody who cares about cinema has already long been stoked about seeing Uncle Boonmee."  In case you are somebody who Just Does Not Care About Cinema, I shall inform you that he refers to Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the latest feature by Thai avant-garde filmmaker Apichatpong "just call me Joe" Weerasethakul and the upset winner of the Palme d'Or for best picture at last year's Cannes Film Festival.  As usual for The Joe, it includes Buddhist and animist mysticism, animal transmogrifications and ruminations on reincarnation, references to Thai folklore and more oblique references to Thai history and politics, homey low-key humor, and lots and lots of jungle vegetation and chirping cricket sounds.  I suppose this is as good a paragraph as any to fulfill my obligations under the law governing all writers on Uncle Boonmee by mentioning the monkey ghosts with glowing red eyes and the disfigured princess who receives oral sex from a talking catfish.

Now, as someone who Cares About Cinema, and who is furthermore a fan of Weerasethakul's work, I was certainly stoked about seeing it long before I did last fall at the New York Film Festival, and was almost equally stoked about seeing it a second time, as I did last month at Manhattan's Film Forum when it was finally released for a U.S. run.  But the combination of that second experience and Stephens' above-quoted assertion got me thinking again about the gap between the quite small group of cosmopolitan-intellectual-professional film pundits and the more-or-less-casual paying audience, and how wide that gap often is even in the cineaste circles of a town like New York.