Films

Published Categorised as Films 2 Comments on Films

I went to see two films at the BFI the past few weeks, both well worth seeing at the cinema rather than on dvd.

Night of the Hunter for Sarah’s birth­day. It’s one of those films I’d never seen all the way through, just a half hour here and there on daytime tv over the years. It turned out some of the events happen in a differ­ent order than I thought. Robert Mitch­um is a creepy Deep South preach­er with HATE and LOVE tattooed on his knuckles with a taste for marry­ing widows and later killing them. He’s trying to extract the secret of where some money is hidden from his latest step-chil­dren, who run away and hide out with a kindly old widow played by Lili­an Gish. The main thing about the film is the fant­ast­ic fram­ing of shots and the supremely creepy atmo­sphere. I espe­cially loved this river sequence.

I also saw Last Year at Mari­en­bad by myself. I was passing by and they had a few last minute tick­ets left. I texted a few people, but no-one was free to come and see it right then, so I thought fuck it, and saw it by myself. Either I am a grown-up now, or deeply sad. I’ve got the DVD of the film anyway, but I wanted to see it at the cinema. Not much happens in the film. It’s not one for the impa­tient. Basic­ally a man keeps bump­ing into a woman at a grand baroque hotel, and he tries to convince her that last year they had a passion­ate affair and planned to run away togeth­er, but she needed a year to decide wheth­er to leave her husband. You see the same events with multiple differ­ent nuances, one minute it seems like the man is mistaken, the next the woman remem­bers. At one time it seems like her husband shoots him, anoth­er like the man assaul­ted the woman, but then it’s reversed, but without jump-cuts or anything like that. Some­times char­ac­ters’ voices discuss­ing previ­ous events change the repres­ent­a­tion of the event. It does have a “prop­er” ending though. It’s a hard film to explain, but it’s worth the patience. There are so many differ­ent theor­ies people have come up with for what’s really happen­ing.

Receive new posts via email. Your data will be kept private.

2 comments

Leave a Reply to the firmamentCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.