The Filmic 5: Sewer Legends Edition
Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley
I. Film Dispatch From Cannes Exciting Me This Week
Of all the recent dispatches from my favorite critics out of Cannes this week, none have proven more tantalizing than that of Sight & Sound critic Jonathan Romney and his review of the second feature by German writer-director Mascha Schilinsk. I'll let Jonathan say it best- enjoy the trailer after (and brush up on your German).
"But in the Official Competition there has already been one distinctive mold-breaker, an alluringly strange offering that will certainly require some reflection and rewatching. Sound of Falling, the second feature by German writer-director Mascha Schilinski, is set over roughly a century around a farmhouse in northeast Germany, and told from the perspectives of a series of girls and young women of different generations. Its time frame stretches from the run-up to World War I until the present via the 1980s, when the calm local stretch of the river Elbe had become the political dividing line between two Germanies. The construction is fragmented, periods and episodes flowing into each other in a liquid fashion that feels almost free-associative, although there’s clearly a well-conceived design at work. This is an intensely imagistic film, with rhythmically recurring motifs—flies, eels, voyeuristic glances through windows and keyholes, the glaring summer sun. The sound design is just as extraordinary: highly textured dynamics, from blasts of silence to an indefinable, fortissimo rumble that recurs throughout, with the narrative similarly ranging from bucolic euphoria to eruptions of catastrophe, violence, and trauma. It’s unlikely we’ll see much else here that’s as inventive, or as haunting—and one suspects that it’s fated to be quite influential, too."
II. Film Trailer Making Me Happy This Week
I am loving this trailer for SISTER MIDNIGHT- a defiantly strange dispatch from the edge of Indian indie cinema. SISTER MIDNIGHT is a feverish coming-of-rage tale that gleefully dismantles genre and gender in equal measure. Set in a myth-soaked Mumbai where the gods don’t sleep and the men never shut up, it follows a young woman possessed—perhaps literally—who begins avenging the violence done to her and others with a cool detachment that borders on divine. Enjoy the trailer- and remember the central thesis of this feminist fable: well-behaved women rarely make compelling protagonists.
III. Film Movement Love I Am Thrilled To Share This Week
I could not have been more happy to encounter some film recommendations from the great critic Richard Brody for an independent film movement DEAR to my heart. In the 1970s, UCLA’s Ethno-Communications program—originally devised as a bureaucratic bandage for minority enrollment—accidentally birthed a seismic cinematic movement. A generation of young Black filmmakers converged there, not to assimilate, but to RADICALLY reframe the lens. What followed was a thrillingly diverse wave of independent cinema: raw, poetic, politically charged, and unapologetically rooted in Black experience. History would call it the L.A. Rebellion; the films, however, speak for themselves. Discover this most underrated of film movements for yourself with three recommendations from the legendary Richard Brody.
“Bush Mama,” the thesis film that Haile Gerima (who entered U.C.L.A. in 1970) completed in 1975, is set in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles and stars Barbara O. Jones as Dorothy, who struggles to raise her young daughter (Susan Williams) when her partner, T.C. (Johnny Weathers), is incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit. (It screens April 25 and April 28.) Gerima’s unflinching yet sometimes heartily humorous view of Dorothy’s world ranges from documentary shots of street life and politically charged interactions with bureaucrats to confessional conversations with a neighbor (Cora Lee Day) and voice-overs evoking Dorothy’s inner life.
Julie Dash entered U.C.L.A. in 1976 but didn’t make her first feature, “Daughters of the Dust” (May 2 and May 4), until 1991; though it’s her only feature to date, it marked the history of cinema by way of its approach to history. It’s set in 1902, in a Gullah community on an island off the coast of Georgia, where a large extended family is preparing to move to the North. The intricate tensions of their relationships are deepened by evocations of the past—including their forebears’ tragic resistance to enslavement—and of enduring African traditions. Dash (whose cast also includes Jones and Day) brings the region’s culture to life by way of a resplendent, spiritually exalted style that’s among the modern cinema’s most distinctive visions.
One of the most acclaimed L.A. Rebellion movies, “Killer of Sheep,” by Charles Burnett—the first of the group to enter U.C.L.A., in 1967 (and a cinematographer on “Bush Mama”)—is screening April 18-24 at Film Forum, in a new restoration. This, too, was a thesis film, completed in 1977, but its release was long delayed because of music rights. It’s a sharply observed, lyrically romantic drama of a young paterfamilias in Watts named Stan (Henry G. Sanders), whose harsh job in a slaughterhouse leaves him embittered and depressed. Burnett tenderly sketches the resulting stresses in Stan’s marriage—a living-room dance scene with his wife (Kaycee Moore), set to Dinah Washington’s record of “This Bitter Earth,” is a classic in itself—and evokes the family’s life in generous detail, with special attention to the couple’s children.
Bonus: You can listen to my film podcast BLINDSPOTTING: A FILM DISCOVERY PODCAST (co-hosted by my cinematic partner-in-crime Scott Aigner) where we deconstruct DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST by clicking HERE!
IV. Cannes Film Festival Guide That I Am Finding Essential This Week
Need a short guide to what to look for at this year's Festival? Check out this great little list complied by David Canfield and Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair by clicking on this link. My favorite descriptive?
Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning
Tom Cruise stars in this tiny independent drama about a man coming to terms with things. We can’t wait.
V. Tribute To A Legend We Lost This Week
Genuinely saddened by the passing in my home state of Colorado today of the legendary Morris the Alligator—reptilian thespian, consummate professional, and star of more films than most SAG cardholders—who passed away quietly in the murky shallows, leaving behind a legacy of dead-eyed stares and scene-stealing stillness. 1980's Alligator- which both traumatized and delighted a very young Jack- STILL remains one of my FAVORITE guilty pleasures.
In a career that spanned creature features, Southern Gothic dramas, and one regrettable romantic comedy, Morris proved that charisma isn't always warm-blooded, and sometimes the best acting is simply sitting...not blinking...mouth agape. Rest Peacefully In The Sewers, My Friend...
Jack Hanley is a Boulder-based film scholar, podcaster, and critic. He is a programmer with the Chicago Underground Film Festival and Boulder International Film Festival. He is one-half of Blindspotting: A Film Discovery Podcast and Flicker with Jack and Scott on YouTube. Find him at Kinophilia on Medium and at HanleyOnFilm.com