📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Mikhail Kalatazov's THE CRANES ARE FLYING (USSR)
Chicago Film Society at Northeastern Illinois University (The Auditorium, Building E 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm
The Soviet Union's sole Palme d'Or winner presents a familiar conundrum to the contemporary viewer: Is it possible to appreciate and even enjoy a formally accomplished work of art knowing the circumstances and intent of its making? A worldwide smash, the film was used far and wide in service of soft diplomacy and cultural exchange. When I worked at an art house in the Boston area in the 1980s, a lavish oversized poster for CRANES decorated the staircase between the first and second floors of our Deco-era theater. Cinematographer Sergei Urusensky's breathlessly giddy lens swoops in and around young lovers Boris and Veronika as they plan their future, then fast-cuts and overlays multiple exposures as each one's fate plays out in ways they couldn't have imagined in their worst nightmares. The deft command of montage is completely at odds with a doctrinaire narrative that preaches self-sacrifice for a country's glory at any cost. The USSR's role in World War II is still celebrated as Victory Day—Russia's greatest historical triumph—no matter its current state or standing in the world. But even back in 1957, during Khruschev's post-Stalin “thaw,” few with any knowledge of the country's low value for human life could have watched such an unreserved patriotic screed without cringing, or, better yet, plugging their ears. And yet, from start to finish, this is such a bravura demonstration of filmic skill that I can't look away. I can think of few examples where form and content are at more extreme cross purposes. A fascinating and confounding film that vividly reminded me of the crushing constraints under which artists must often labor. Preceded by a 1957 trailer reel. (1957, 95 min, 35mm) [Dmitry Samarov]
Robert Mugge’s SUN RA: A JOYFUL NOISE (US/Documentary)
Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Thursday, 7pm [Free Admission]
Befitting its subject, Robert Mugge’s documentary about Sun Ra is a free-form portrait that alternates between soliloquies by the artist, performances by his Arkestra, and interviews with bandmates and ordinary people in the group’s hometown of Philadelphia. Sun Ra was not only a major figure in jazz but also in the culture of Afrofruturism, and Mugge’s film honors him in both respects. In his spellbinding monologues (one of them shot in front of the White House), Sun Ra comes across like the protagonist of the great Afrofuturist novel: he talks about being from outer space, alludes to secret knowledge possessed by the Earth, and praises the society of ancient Egypt as the most advanced the world has ever seen. Sun Ra’s worldview might sound strange at first, but it makes a surprising amount of sense in the context of his music, which sounds at once primitive and futuristic. (In one of the best scenes of A JOYFUL NOISE, a percussionist from the Arkestra describes how Sun Ra instructed him to construct a drum out of a tree that had been struck by lightning.) The film features some scenes of the Arkestra in full swing, and what’s so remarkable about them is how the music seems to teeter on chaos but never quite get there—it almost feels as though the music were being summoned. This is partly a result of Mugge’s smart ordering of the material, which presents Sun Ra’s music as being in conversation with his otherworldly vision. Ideas beget music, which in turn inspires reflection and then more culture. This cyclical process may be most evident in the scene where Mugge profiles some regulars at a Philadelphia neighborhood hangout and they talk about what Sun Ra’s music means to them. Maybe one of these people took up an instrument because of his influence? If there’s a messianic quality to some of Sun Ra’s proclamations, it feels earned given how much he inspired the culture at large. Screening with two Sun Ra-related shorts: Edward English’s SPACEWAYS (1968, 18 min, 16mm) and Maxine Haleff’s THE FORBIDDEN PLAYGROUND (1966, 10 min, 16mm). Followed by an in-person discussion with Robert Mugge. (1980, 60 min, 16mm) [Ben Sachs]
Joan of Arc Presents: Carl Theodor Dreyer's THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (France/Silent)
Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm
Praised effusively upon its release by critics who instantly regarded it as a belated vindication for the whole art of cinema (do seek out Harry Alan Potamkin's review), THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC was also recognized as the capstone of an expiring medium. This is a proudly silent movie, one that integrates the intertitle into its rhythm better and more comprehensively than any other example I can name. (Astonishingly, rather than interrupting the flow of Dreyer's breakneck montage, the titles actually serve as graphic punctuation.) It's also a perverse one—stripped down to essentials, focusing on faces even though Dreyer's investors paid for enormous and authentic sets barely glimpsed in the finished film. When we see a man in very modern-looking glasses in the final sequences, this possible anachronism registers as something else: Dreyer and Falconetti have truly created a living Joan, larger than liturgy and beatification and indeed, larger than her own time. The film itself was not so lucky. Its original cut lost in a fire, with a subsequent recut lost in another fire, PASSION played for many years in a version cobbled together from outtakes. (Appropriately enough, an original print of the first Danish version turned up in a mental hospital in the 1980s.) Co-presented by Chicago Humanities Festival. Live accompaniment performed by storied Chicago band Joan of Arc, who have reunited especially for this event. (1928, 82 min, DCP Digital) [K.A. Westphal]
John Milius’ CONAN THE BARBARIAN (US) / Paul Schrader’s MASTER GARDENER (US)
Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 9:30pm / AMC River East 21 – See Venue website for showtimes
Two of the most contentious figures of New Hollywood are represented on Chicago screens this week. Sunday night brings a rare 35mm revival of CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982, 129 min, 35mm), which was directed and cowritten by John Milius, one of the minds behind THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN (1972), APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), and 1941 (1979); meanwhile, the River East continues its sure-to-be short-lived Chicago run of MASTER GARDENER (2022, 111 min, DCP Digital), the latest from Paul Schrader, a longtime collaborator of Martin Scorsese and a prolific filmmaker in his own right. Though these movies come from different eras and very different mindsets, it’s worth noting how much their authors have in common. Both began as film scholars before they became high-profile screenwriters and then directors, and both stayed true to their roots in that they’ve frequently acknowledged the influence of their forebears in their own work. Milius’ best film, BIG WEDNESDAY (1978), openly derives its grandeur from John Ford, while Scharder has referenced Robert Bresson’s DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST (1951) and PICKPOCKET (1959) so many times that this writer has lost count. Schrader and Milius’ critical/scholarly sensibility helped shape an American cinema that engaged with movies of different times and places, often to surprising new ends. On the other hand, it could also give way to a sort of creative paralysis, in which the filmmakers are unable to see beyond their timeworn influences and fall back on rote storytelling and/or shock value in an effort to keep them going. Another thing Milius and Schrader have in common is that when they’re bad, they’re really bad; yet even then, their work exhibits commendable craftsmanship and cultural literacy. That literacy extends to low culture as well as high: see, for instance, Schrader’s CAT PEOPLE remake or CONAN THE BARBARIAN (both released in 1982), which was based on the father of all sword-and-sorcery pulp narratives. Indeed, Milius’ film often achieves a pulp glory that suggests a fusion of Fritz Lang’s DIE NIBELUNGEN saga (1924) and the National Socialist spectacles of Leni Riefenstahl. Milius shot much of it in the Andalusian mountains, and he makes the most of his locations—the widescreen images have an epic, commanding quality that’s sure to be well served by the Music Box’s main theater. If CONAN was a big commercial hit, however, it probably wasn’t because of the assured cinematography. A celebration of primal, masculine force, the film seems perfectly suited for the early years of the Reagan Administration, with its fascistic dreams of endless militarization and unions getting violently crushed. Like George Lucas’ STAR WARS (1977), CONAN approaches mythic storytelling with a tone that’s at once serious and joking. Milius never really criticizes the adolescent fantasies of brute violence and sexual conquest at the heart of Robert E. Howard’s writing; at the same time, he throws in enough light-hearted moments and winks to the audience that let on that he’s okay with laughing at this stuff too. (This mix of self-seriousness and ludicrousness, to say nothing of all the barbarism, also makes CONAN a great movie to watch after listening to a bunch of heavy metal records, so it’s a good thing that the Music Box will host a metal DJ in the lounge for about two hours before the show.) Conversely, MASTER GARDENER is unequivocal in its critique of macho hunter types in general and American fascists in particular. That’s a little surprising, considering that Robin Wood once wrote that “the position implicit in Paul Schrader’s work… can be quite simply characterized as quasi-Fascist… crucial in its sinister relation to all this [is] the glorification of the dehumanized hero as an efficient killing machine.” Joel Edgerton’s wonderfully named Narvel Roth is another of Schrader’s penitent heroes, and what he’s penitent about is having been a dehumanized killing machine—it’s gradually revealed that this monk-like gardener was once the member of a murderous white supremacist gang; his present-day ascetic lifestyle is borne out of atonement. In another pleasant surprise, the first half of MASTER GARDENER reflects the influence not only of Bresson, but also of Yasujiro Ozu (another subject of Schrader’s film criticism book Transcendental Cinema yet rarely a touchstone in his films) in its serene pacing and beatific tone; there are some wonderful scenes of Edgerton rhapsodizing about gardening that make you feel how therapeutic this vocation is for him. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Schrader is meditating on a most urgent question: is it possible to reform the worst of Donald Trump’s supporters, people like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers? Schrader invokes the concepts of redemption and forgiveness, approaching this issue as a spiritual matter. It’s one of the most audacious moves in this unpredictable auteur’s filmography. [Ben Sachs]
Luigi Bazzoni’s FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON (Italy)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday, Midnight
When a film has three English titles—FOOTPRINTS (from the literal translation of its Italian title, LE ORME), PRIMAL IMPULSE, and FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON—you can tell that its American distributors had a hard time trying to figure out how to sell this giallo film from Italy to a mainstream audience. FOOTPRINTS is indeed an oddity in the giallo canon. Its protagonist (who also has three English names) is a severe-looking professional woman who projects neither innocence nor sexuality. There is almost no blood or violence, and it has a kooky series of black-and-white dreams that involve astronauts on the moon. The film is both slow mystery and almost comic science fiction involving mad Dr. Blackmann played by equally mad Klaus Kinski. Yet, the slowly built dread of the script by director Luigi Bazzoni and Mario Fanelli, based on the latter’s novel, entraps us as much as it does Alice Cespi, the confused translator who learns she has missed two days of her life and follows clues to Garma, an Islamic town on an island in the Adriatic Sea where everyone knows her despite her claim that she has never been there. Florinda Bolkan, of nunsploitation fame with FLAVIA, THE HERETIC (1974), exudes torment as she tries to understand what is happening to her, and the supporting cast of characters checks a lot of dreamscape boxes. Most evocative of all are the locations, including a Victorian-style hotel that would not have been out of place in THE SHINING (1980) and a mansion of almost indescribable beauty, all impeccably shot by master cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. After careful pondering of the film, you should find that the final title card explaining Alice’s dilemma is unnecessary, but making sense of what did or did not happen is another matter. Screening as part of Mezzanotte at the Music Box, programmed and presented by Stephanie Sack. (1975, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Wim Wenders' PARIS, TEXAS (Germany/France/US)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
One of the most revealing pieces of dialogue in PARIS, TEXAS occurs when, following a screening of an old family movie, the eight-year-old Hunter is getting ready for bed. Hunter had noticed the way his father Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), who’s just returned from an unexplained four-year estrangement, watched the footage of his wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski), who’s been absent for the same length of time. The boy explains to his adopted mother that he believes Travis still loves Jane. “But that’s not her,” he pointedly adds. “That’s only her in a movie.” A beat, as a cheeky smile forms across his face. “A long time ago. In a galaxy far, far away.” What begins as a remarkably lucid insight about the illusion of the cinematic image, and about the fantasies on which it hinges, can’t help but be capped off by a quote that then reinforces those very illusions. This is PARIS, TEXAS in a nutshell: a world of willful, even blithe mirages and imagos, in which all understanding of other people is mediated by the idealized myths of mass culture. Wenders is not above speaking the language of these myths, even as he meticulously dismantles them. Written by the all-American Sam Shepard and L. M. Kit Carson, the film radiates a love for the aesthetic and narrative iconography of the American West, from the wide-open tableaux of towering mesas and endless road to Travis’ rugged, archetypal masculine loner, whose quest to rescue a woman and tenuous attempts to reintegrate into society remix that of Ethan Edwards in THE SEARCHERS. Like so many other émigré artists ensorcelled and perturbed by the U.S., including compatriots like Douglas Sirk, Wenders doesn’t merely indulge in the grammar of Americana but defamiliarizes it to reveal, from an outsider’s critical distance, how truly melancholy, strange, and even menacing it can be. From Wenders’ vantage (and from the extraordinary camera of Robby Müller, who really hits the patriotic reds and blues copiously supplied by art director Kate Altman and costume designer Birgitta Bjerke), the West is no longer a grand frontier of imperialist expansion but a desiccated strip of roadside advertisements, diners, and motels. Not only is our would-be hero Travis a Man With No Name, he’s practically a Man With No Self, an icon emptied of past and presence and purpose, set to roam perpetually in the desert to which he’s withdrawn himself. He clings desperately to the idée-fixe of a measly plot of land he’s bought in Paris, which he and his parents wished was in France. Unfortunately, it’s really just in this godforsaken Southwestern dust bowl, and like Jane in that family movie, it’s nothing but an image. Travis’ illusions, and his dawning understanding of his need to atone for all the damage they’ve caused, finally lead to PARIS, TEXAS’ famous peep-show scenes, where mirrors and screens—those quintessential analogs of the cinema apparatus—give way, ironically, to piercing disillusions. In Wenders’ ambivalent but heartfelt ode to Americas dreamed and (uncertainly) lived, such revelations are a bittersweet matter of course. It’s what you do with them that counts. Screening as part of the Stranger in a Strange Land series. (1984, 145 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Festival de Cannes at FACETS
Through Sunday at FACETS Cinema
Nuri Bilge Ceylan's WINTER SLEEP (Turkey)
Saturday, 3pm
Nuri Bilge Ceylan followed up his 2011 masterpiece ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA with this impressive companion piece, a Chekhovian chamber drama that focuses on dialogue-driven interior scenes as much as the earlier movie did on its majestically filmed journey through the barren Turkish landscape at night. The central figure here is Aydin (Haluk Bilginer), a retired, middle-aged actor who runs a hotel in rural Anatolia with his pretty young wife, Nihal (Melisa Sözen), and his combative, recently divorced sister, Necla (Demet Akbag). The verbal sparring which Aydin frequently engages with both women serves to mask the disappointment he feels with himself over his inability to start his long-cherished dream project of writing a non-fiction account of the history of the Turkish theater. Some critics complained that the Jane Campion-led Cannes jury was only recognizing the longest film and not the best by bestowing Ceylan with the Palme d'Or, but these complaints do a disservice to his achievement. WINTER SLEEP does indeed require each one of its three hours and 16 minutes in order to fully illustrate Aydin's predicament in both its tragedy and ridiculousness (the film is at times surprisingly funny), and no contemporary director has a better compositional eye than Ceylan, who was a professional photographer before he turned to filmmaking. Perhaps not as formally perfect as ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA, this is nonetheless a spellbinding experience—masterfully written, directed and performed. (2014, 196 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
---
Hirokazu Kore-eda's SHOPLIFTERS (Japan)
Saturday, 7pm
Coming home after a day spent shoplifting, a man and a boy see a young girl playing by herself outside an apartment and decide to take her home with them. Their household is presided over by an elderly woman, along with two younger women, one of whom has a relationship with the man. Their home is a ramshackle corrugated lean-to, perpetually in danger of being demolished by a local property flipper. They get by on various grifts and scams to supplement the meager salaries of the grownups’ menial jobs and the old lady’s pension. Each member of this makeshift family does their best to play the part they wish they had in their previous lives. I kept thinking of Dickens’ Oliver Twist while watching this movie. There’s a lot of Fagin in the man and of the Artful Dodger in the boy; the grubby neediness of their lives is out of Dickens as well. In his careful and unassuming way, Kore-eda has made a devastating indictment of capitalist society, as well as the sacrosanct place the nuclear family holds within its structures. He continues plumbing the depth and breadth of what connects one human being to another through this group of strangers—unwanted or rejected by their relations and by the larger world—who throw in their lots together to form a bond made by choice rather than blood. This one left me gutted. (2018, 121 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]
---
Lars von Trier's MELANCHOLIA (International)
Sunday, 4pm
Recall for a moment, before the hype on MELANCHOLIA veered left around the 2011 Cannes film festival, how the cinematic community shared a collective laugh following Lars von Trier's early proclamation that his end-of-days opus would be his first film to feature an unhappy ending. Even with common wisdom against lending the man's ramblings much credence, nothing short of cataclysmic was expected. These expectations do wonders for MELANCHOLIA, which, liberated at the outset of the remotest chance of a final reprieve, forces viewers into the skin of von Trier surrogate Justine, a depressed bride facing both the figurative and literal end of the world. As Justine, Kirsten Dunst turns in a career-best performance, careening through emotional swings as only someone who has been there and back again can embody, and still Charlotte Gainsbourg very nearly eclipses her in the film's more insulated second half; her role as Justine's put upon yet supportive sister Claire is of paramount importance in this subtlety-free portrait of depression. Von Trier's ploy to christen himself the modern Tarkovsky is apparent enough in the titular looming planet and the recurring Brueghel references, but he goes for broke with the year's most visceral final shot, allowing this most personal project to bow out on an emotional high note. And at that end, "unhappy" proves an adequate qualifier, given the gloomy forecast for all mankind, yet it doesn't sum up the spectacular visions, the emotional crescendos, or the golden mean achieved by Dunst and Gainsbourg, all of which meet their natural zenith under the glow of MELANCHOLIA. Not something to watch so much as to behold. (2011, 136 min, DCP Digital) [Tristan Johnson]
---
Also as part of the Festival de Cannes at FACETS series, Cristian Mungiu’s 2016 film GRADUATION (128 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 1pm. More info here.
Andrea Pallaoro's MONICA (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
The prodigal return—a theme as old as time—gets a subtle and of-the-moment interpretation in Andrea Palloaro's (MEDEAS, HANNAH) third feature. Monica (Trace Lysette, in a quietly commanding turn) is called back to her rural hometown to help care for the terminally ill mother who once put her on a bus out of town, completely rejecting her in lieu of goodbye. It is not the mother, nor the brother she hasn't seen since leaving as a late teen, but the sister-in-law Monica's never met who asks her to come back. The family and town are both crumbling, and her attempts to reengage are at first rejected or met with suspicion. But the longer she stays, the more she knows she needs them as much as they need her. Filmed in a shadow-filled 4:3 ratio, the camera shows either what Monica sees or what someone who's on the couch or in bed with her might. There are few long shots or even ones where we see Monica's entire body. Unlike the more standard widescreen formats used in contemporary cinema, 4:3 privileges human figures over their environments—you can think of it as portrait rather than landscape mode. This formal decision lends the film a palpable intimacy and helps Pallaoro tell what could have been a sentimental or emotionally-front-loaded story with surprising resonance and subtlety. Pains are taken to avoid didacticism and clichĂ©. This is a trans story that never utters the word, which makes the way an estranged family grapples with Monica's identity that much more lived-in. There are so few false notes that a scene where mother, grandchildren, and daughter assemble a jigsaw puzzle of Salvador DalĂ's The Persistence of Memory stands apart as a real groaner. It's a rare misstep in a film that centers intelligence, respect, and tolerance when dealing with human differences and long-standing family schisms. It's a point of view glaringly absent but badly needed in this country's conversation with itself. (2022, 106 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]
Felix van Groeningen & Charlotte Vandermeersch’s THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS (Italy/Belgium/France)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
A man and two young boys approach a glacier in the Italian alps, a huge crevasse separating the mountainous terrain from the icy expanse. The man jumps onto the glacier, followed by one of the boys. The other, contending with altitude sickness, struggles. This is the man’s son, Pietro; the other boy is his friend, Bruno, who lives in the secluded region year round. That Pietro’s father and Bruno have in common such a tolerance for the excesses of the natural world is the start of the fissure between the patriarch and his son, which becomes a crevasse in its own right. Their strained relationship finally falls between the cracks during a pivotal moment some years later wherein Pietro tells his father that he’s wasted his life, a declaration spurred by the engineer’s workaholic tendencies. More time passes, the father dies, and Pietro (played by MARTIN EDEN star Luca Marinelli as an adult) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) reconnect in the mountainside where, per Pietro’s father’s wish, they build a house. This house becomes a reconvening point for the two men over the coming years. Bruno stays put, reopening his uncle’s alpeggio, finding a wife in one of Pietro’s friends from Turin, and later having a daughter with her. Pietro is a wanderer, however, traveling the world and returning to the mountainside only in summer. He later likens their dynamic to that of a parable he’s heard among his odyssey: he’s the man who’s traveled the eight mountains while Bruno is the one who’s ascended the single mountain at the range’s center. Each approach has its benefits, its drawbacks; where initially it may seem as if Pietro’s wandering is for naught, it becomes clear that this is how he’s found meaning in life, and how he’s come to terms with his relationship with his father. And what may have originally seemed like the definition of freedom—a mountain, all one’s own, reliant only on one’s self—has become a sort of voluntary imprisonment for Bruno. Ultimately both men contend with their own proverbial crevasse, with only the other to understand their existential disjuncture. As a tale of selfhood, the film is remarkably poignant; as a tale of friendship, even more so. It’s also strikingly beautiful, shot by Belgian cinematographer Ruben Impens. The only real issue I have with it is the music intended to punctuate passages of time, written and performed by Daniel Norgren. While not necessarily bad, it does evoke 2010s indie-folk rock (think Mumford & Sons, etc.) in a sometimes nauseatingly sentimental way. Marinelli’s elegiac narration of certain parts, however, helps to balance this out. Adapted from Paolo Cognetti’s 2016 novella of the same name by co-directors and partners Felix van Groeningen (THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN, BEAUTIFUL BOY) and Charlotte Vandermeersch (in her directorial debut), THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS is a captivating examination of the ties that bind us and those which set us free. (2022, 147 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Emanuele Crialese’s L’IMMENSITÀ (Italy)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
If Penélope Cruz is the Sophia Loren of her generation, then this may be her TWO WOMEN—the film that lets her deliver an instantly iconic characterization of motherhood. L’IMMENSITÀ is Emanuele Crialese’s autobiographical drama about a well-to-do family coming apart in 1970s Italy, and Cruz anchors the work as Clara, a wife and mother who withstands an abusive marriage in order to be close to her three kids, whom she loves with heroic might. Crialese honors the children’s perspective most of the time, so the episodes of abuse are limited to the few scenes they witness (those scenes are plenty harrowing, however). Generally, it’s one of those bittersweet celebration of childhood movies that the Italians are especially good at making, with naturalistic scenes of kids playing in groups, kids discovering physical intimacy, and kids rebounding from tragedy. There’s at least one good fantasy sequence too, a musical number where Cruz and the kids ham it up for the camera like all those brats in LICORICE PIZZA. The fantasy sequence specifically belongs to Adri, a preteen who’s first starting to assert his gender identity, and one thing that makes L’IMMENSITÀ distinctive is how it acknowledges the character’s imagination as both a talent and an escape from traumatic situations. Clara is wholly supportive of Adri in his gender affirmation and provides him not only emotional support; she downright spoils him whenever she can. Cruz plays the role like a diva, and this seems fitting, given the towering role Clara plays in Adri’s life. Indeed, the film derives so much of its power from the relationship between mother and son that it could be classified as a love story. (2022, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Kelly Reichardt's SHOWING UP (US)
FACETS Cinema – Friday, 7pm
Far away from posh corporate fairs and Insta glamor lifestyle-influenced meta-worlds, our globe is dotted with pocket communities of painters, sculptors, and multimedia artists quietly going about the esoteric, sometimes inchoate business of making art day to day. It is one such alcove—set in director Reichardt's home town of Portland, Oregon—that is the focus of her eighth feature. Throughout her 30-year career Reichardt has consistently avoided the peak-valley conventions of traditional narrative film. Her work is often described as quiet, but I think that shortchanges its slow-burn intensity. Just because her characters avoid cliché conflict points doesn't mean they lack passion or anger. In fact, by often underplaying moments that might be treated as cataclysmic in a Hollywood picture, Reichardt imbues real human friction with a much longer echo. She has a knack for staging low-key, seemingly mundane scenes that linger in the mind. Lizzy (Michelle Williams), a frustrated put-upon sculptor is waging stealth passive-aggressive war against Jo (Hong Chau), her more successful, extroverted colleague/landlord/frenemy. She complains about being without hot water to take a shower and cares for the injured pigeon Jo "discovered" in the yard after Lizzy's cat nearly ate it. She watches enviously as Jo gets accolades for her work, takes men home, has parties, and generally lives the embodied, actualized life Lizzy can't even bring herself to dream of. Williams anchors the film with a performance seemingly inspired by the lumpy, not-quite-formed figures Portland artist Cynthia Lahti has provided to stand in for Lizzy's work. Wearing only earth-toned outfits designed not to reveal a thing about the wearer, her hair a mousey brown, Lizzy is a vague peripheral being who nevertheless hints at depths. She's not the typical movie hero and her challenges are not usual movie problems. The thing Reichardt's film nails most precisely is how ill-suited artists are to deal adequately with quotidian problems but how gracefully they can let intractable differences roll off their backs. Mental illness is treated as a possible mark of genius rather than a symptom to be corrected, and baffling behavior of every kind is accepted with bemused humor. The final scene of Jo and Lizzy wandering away from Lizzy's art opening, trying to track the once-injured pigeon who's flown away is graceful, funny, and a little melancholy all at once. A perfect coda to a movie that celebrates the value of detours and left turns. (2022, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING
âš« Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA), presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation now playing at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, called we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video, which has a runtime of approximately 48 minutes, will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station. The video will run day and night through mid-March next year. More info here.
âš« Cinema/Chicago
Lesya Kalynska and Ruslan Batytskyi’s 2022 Ukrainian film A RISING FURY (82 min, Digital Projection) screens on Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago History Museum (1601 N Clark St.). Free admission with online registration. More info here.
âš« Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
William Sachs’ 1977 film THE FORCE BEYOND (85 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission. More info here.
âš« Gene Siskel Film Center
Sam Green’s 2023 documentary 32 SOUNDS (95 min, DCP Digital) begins this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
The 2023 National Theatre Live production of James Graham’s BEST OF ENEMIES, directed by Jeremy Herrin, screens Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Music Box Theatre
It’s officially Music Box Garden Movies season! See Venue website for films and showtimes.
Nicole Holofcener’s 2023 film YOU HURT MY FEELINGS (93 min, DCP Digital) begins this week, and Matt Johnson’s 2023 comedy BLACKBERRY (119 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.
Brad Kofman’s 2023 film THE CLAIM (85 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 9:45pm. Programmed and presented by Kofman.
David McNally’s 2020 classic COYOTE UGLY (107 min, 35mm) screens Friday and Saturday at midnight. Arrive at 11:30pm for a vinyl DJ set and dance party by Gaudy God.
Sam Martin and Anneliese Toft’s 2023 short film RECOVERED (26 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday, 7pm, with cast and crew in attendance.
Music Box of Horrors presents Ricky Lau’s MR. VAMPIRE 2 (1986, 86 min, 35mm) and MR. VAMPIRE 3 (1987, 88 min, 35mm) on Wednesday at 8:45pm. More info on all screenings here.
âš« South Side Home Movie Project
D-Composition: Love Is… takes place Friday, 8pm, at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company (1650 N. Halsted St.). Per the event description, the performance “uses the music of Black composers to breathe new life into poetry and the written word, featuring audio and visual vignettes of footage from the South Side Home Movie Project. The performance features the D-Composed string quartet with poetry and storytelling by Shanta Nurullah, Jamila Woods, avery r. young, Krista Franklin, Raych Jackson and Davon Clark and compositions by Sharon Udoh, Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery, Carlos Simon and Ahmed Al Abaca.” More info here.
âš« Sweet Void Cinema
Find information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its screening and workshop schedule, here.
CINE-LIST: May 26 - June 1, 2023
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Marilyn Ferdinand, Tristan Johnson, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Dmitry Samarov, Michael Glover Smith, K.A. Westphal