Press Play Video Blog

Watch: Chantal Akerman’s ‘Jeanne Dielman’ Is a True Action Movie

In Chantal Akerman’s ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,’ a series of mundane actions are transformed into hugely communicative gestures that keep the viewer suspended between a place of understanding the main character’s inner world and a place of total ambiguity. Akerman establishes a routine and then uses variations and interruptions in that routine to expose the protagonist’s psychology. Tasks such as cooking and cleaning become pure narrative, events in sequence moving forward in a suspenseful and ominous arc. In reducing a film to such actions, and imbuing them with meaning, these otherwise dull activities become compelling. Actions speak louder than words, and ‘Jeanne Dielman’ is cinema’s purest action movie.

Adam Cook is a Vancouver-based independent film critic, editor, and programmer. He is a regular contributor to Cinema Scope and a columnist for Little White Lies. He has written for, among others, Sight & Sound, Cineaste, Film Comment, Fandor, Indiewire, and Brooklyn Magazine.

Watch: What’s the Body Count in Quentin Tarantino’s Films? Warning: Not Safe for Lunch

Watch: What’s the Body Count in Quentin Tarantino’s Films?

https://vimeo.com/148832585

One of the things Quentin Tarantino’s films are known for, aside from their film references, their dialogue, their story structure, their resurrection of actors’ careers, is, of course, their violence. In his newest piece for Fandor, an effort which took him three years to complete, Kevin B. Lee has counted the number of deaths that have taken place in Tarantino’s films to date, to as close a degree of accuracy as anyone could reach. The answer? You’ll just have to watch for yourself.

One thing: don’t watch this while you eat.

Watch: The ‘Star Wars’ Climax and the Movies Behind It

It’s hard to watch the climactic scene in ‘Star Wars: Episode IV’ without breaking a sweat. Why is that? Is it the stakes involved in the story at this point, in which Luke’s quest to destroy the Death Star would read to anyone who had been paying attention as the one thing that could save all human and non-human life? Is it the pacing of the scene? The jump cuts? The constantly changing perspective? Or George Lucas’s shrewd assimilation of myriad influences into one burst of cinematic energy? Julian Palmer has chosen this scene as the final episode in his ‘Discarded Image’ series with 1848 Media, and fittingly: by the end of the scene, one really does feel stunned, wiped out, and, optimistically, gratified, to a degree with which few films of its era could compare. Palmer does an excellent job of exploring the scene, getting under its hood and finding out how it works, and, by extension, telling us quite a bit about Lucas himself, as well as the film’s historical context, in this piece: I look forward to seeing what Palmer will do next.

Watch: In ‘Hannibal,’ The Script Is Only the Beginning

The script is everything and nothing at the the same time. In this video essay, Vashi Nedomansky runs the script for the ‘Hannibal‘ pilot below 5 minutes of the actual episode. And what do we learn? We learn that, to work with Bryan Fuller’s script, DP James Hawkinson had to listen to it. David Slade, the director, could only help him so much–and the vision Fuller might have had in mind was only as executable as he made it on the page. We can see, from the samples we have here, that the script was explicit–but we can also see that scripts don’t move or make noise. For the show to come to terrifying, pristine life, as it has, the visions of the DP and director had to catch fire, somehow. And, judging from the show we have in front of us, that fire was one that would burn for a long time.

Watch: What Makes a David Lynch Film So… Lynchian?

https://vimeo.com/147956910

If you ask me the question What makes a David Lynch film "Lynchian"? And I answer, If I have to explain, you probably won’t understand it, I’m not being as obnoxious as you might think. There is a quality to Lynch’s films that resists understanding, description, summary, analysis, or any of the other activities we engage in to make artworks more palatable. This excellent new video essay by Kevin B. Lee for Fandor, using text from Dennis Lim’s book David Lynch: The Man from Another Place comes as close, really, as one might ever get to characterizing Lynch’s work, with some surprising cameos. Susan Boyle? Lynchian? Perhaps. You be the judge…

Watch: Brian De Palma’s Split Diopter Shot Creates Worlds Upon Worlds

https://vimeo.com/148122285

Because Brian De Palma is fascinated by the inherently Byzantine nature of human activity, be it war, detective work, murder, or espionage, it makes perfect sense that he would be drawn to the split diopter shot, which uses an attachment that gives equal focus to both close and distant objects. De Palma doesn’t want us to miss anything. Even as Caruso sings on stage, the murderous Al Capone sits a matter of feet away from him, in ‘The Untouchables‘; even as a drone scratches his head in ‘Mission: Impossible,’ a stealthy thief hangs above him; even as a blond, all-American teen boy sits bored at a classroom desk, a tortured girl writhes inwardly not far away from him in ‘Carrie.’ What’s the effect? It’s a tightening in the chest, it’s a sense that there’s something we missed previously, it’s the feeling that something bad is about to happen, or could. This video by Jaume Lloret is a tight visual hymn to De Palma’s famed use of the shot–watch it, and see if you don’t feel uncomfortable afterwards.

Watch: For Christopher Nolan, Hands Are a Locus of Power

In the work of Christopher Nolan, hands shape the world, reclaim it, destroy it, ameliorate it, keep in order, drive it to a state of chaos, hold it back, steer us through. And in so being, how is Nolan’s work any different from any other filmmaker, you ask? It’s that Nolan gently nudges us with the idea of the hands’ supremacy. For a director who at times seems to be bursting with florid bombast, he also relishes in quiet moments, so much so that a detail like recurring use of hand close-ups might be the last thing you would notice and yet, simultaneously, the most important thing of all. This video essay by Jorge Luengo moves us through Nolan’s filmography, drawing our attention to the quiet primacy these appendages can obtain.

Watch: Robert Bresson, Master of the Self-Sustaining Shot

Robert Bresson was a French filmmaker whose minimalist approach to filmmaking and dedicated precision in his style made him a favorite among his contemporaries and the following generation of filmmakers—most notably Jean-Luc Godard and Andrei Tarkovsky, both of whom cited him as a strong influence. His filmic philosophies of using real locations, non-actors, and retaining authorial control helped to inspire the start of the French New Wave.

Bresson was born in 1901 in central France and later moved to Paris where, as a young man, he wanted to be a painter. In fact, he didn’t make his first feature film until he was already in his early forties. By that time, he had been a prisoner of war for a year and his debut film, released in 1943, would be his only feature film made during the Nazi occupation of France. The film is titled ‘Angels of Sin’ and follows a young woman who decides to become a nun. ‘Angels of Sin,’ as well as his second film, would be the only of Bresson’s films to feature a cast of professional actors.

His time spent as a prisoner of war would influence one of his most famous films, titled ‘A Man Escaped,’ which follows a French Resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied France named Fontaine, who is taken prisoner. The film traces Fontaine’s attempts to escape the prison, and the story is based on a real person named Andre Devigny who managed to escape a Nazi-run prison in France during World War II. Bresson tells this story as factually as possible—the events are not sensationalized, and this allows us to better connect with the experience of Fontaine’s predicament and put ourselves in his shoes.

Catholicism would also be a major influence on his work, showing up in nearly all of his films, and several center entirely around the religion. Bresson himself was said to have identified as a “Christian Atheist,” although it is unclear to what extent. The themes of his films range from finding salvation and redemption to commentary on French society.

Perhaps his most famous film, titled ‘Pickpocket,’ follows a thief learning and practicing techniques to master his craft. Bresson’s discipline as a painter most likely contributed to the precision of his shots. He would storyboard his shots alone and then set his drawings aside never to look at them again during production. He is well-known for fragmenting the body through composing shots of hands or feet, which was part of his aim to find and define the language of film as opposed to many other films, which could just as easily be done on the stage.

In his forty years of filmmaking, Bresson would make only thirteen films, yet his impact on cinema as an art form leaves us with a masterful and unique demonstration of what the medium can do.

Clips:

‘Angels of Sin’ (1943 dir. Robert Bresson)
‘Diary of a Country Priest’ (1951 dir. Robert Bresson)
‘A Man Escaped’ (1956 dir. Robert Bresson)
‘Pickpocket’ (1959 dir. Robert Bresson)
‘The Trial of Joan of Arc’ (1962 dir. Robert Bresson)
‘Au hasard Balthazar’ (1966 dir. Robert Bresson)
‘Mouchette’ (1967 dir. Robert Bresson)
‘A Gentle Woman’ (1969 dir. Robert Bresson)
‘L’argent’ (1983 dir. Robert Bresson)
‘Breathless’ (1960 dir. Jean-Luc Godard)

Tyler Knudsen, a San Francisco Bay Area native, has been a student of film for most of his life. Appearing in several television commercials as a child, Tyler was inspired to shift his focus from acting to directing after performing as a featured extra in Vincent Ward’s What Dreams May Come. He studied Film & Digital Media with an emphasis on production at the University of California, Santa Cruz and recently moved to New York City where he currently resides with his girlfriend.

Watch: Michael Powell’s ‘Peeping Tom’ Painted the Perversity Born of Loneliness

Of course Martin Scorsese championed Michael Powell’s ‘Peeping Tom.’ Scorsese knew a fellow connoisseur of isolation when he saw one. This video essay by the Weld Art Collective deftly explores this classic, teaching a little bit about its remarkable director, as well as his frequent collaborator Emeric Pressberger. Without films such as this story of a murderous, perverted photographer, the films of Brian DePalma, David Lynch, Ken Russell, and other similar directors would either be different or would not exist. Powell’s films have an enduring mystery about them, possibly because he takes on subjects which are themselves, in a sense, depthless.

KICKING TELEVISION: Depression and the Sitcom

There were times not too long ago when I was not happy. Not because I was alone, which I was, or I was wasting my life, which I was, or because I was immersing myself in bad decisions, which I was. My unhappiness was easily masked. It was kept secret. I took a perverse pleasure in that secrecy. Mental illness, in my experience, takes on its own life. It becomes a tangible entity, an unwanted partner, a relationship with the self built on parasitic dependency, among other dependencies. And yet, when depression is portrayed on TV, it seems so foreign, so abstract, a caricature of what the illness really is; sometimes a literal caricature (like in BoJack Horseman or The Simpsons) and sometimes a more subtle cartoon, like in Two and a Half Men.

In the sitcom, depression is just another punchline. The canon is filled with scripts that mine depression for laughs. Alcoholism on Cheers or Mom, Frasier’s desperate help line callers, Two and a Half Men’s hedonism and loneliness, or years of trauma comically manifesting in the fallibility of the real world on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, are all born of some form of depression. It’s interesting that sitcom writers can find creative ways to discuss cancer (The Big C), divorce (Louie), war (M*A*S*H), homophobia (Will & Grace), class and domestic abuse (Roseanne), race (All in the Family), or alcoholism (all of them), but examples of engaging and inventive discourse on depression are hard to find. Even on shows that feature psychotherapists, like Frasier or The Bob Newhart Show, depression is a caricature.

I’m not condemning that mode. In my writing, I’ve used my struggles with happiness as a vehicle for humour. I have found self-deprecation in discussing my own struggles cathartic. And I would imagine that’s what sitcom writers find as well—or they’re just monsters that love other people’s suffering, like Republicans or cable news.

Accurate and deft sitcom portrayals of depression may often be found in animated series. Moe the bartender’s annual suicide attempts on The Simpsons are played for laughs, but careful consideration of Moe Szyslak finds a nuanced and skilled portrait of a character struggling with mental illness. His frequent attempts at self-harm and his violent oscillation between anger and indifference are contrasted by sentimental and selfless acts like reading to sick children and a genuine and hopeful capacity for love.

Similarly, BoJack Horseman manages to discourse on despondency and emotional disorder through the filter of an anthropomorphised horse/former sitcom star with a skill live-action comedy can’t seem to muster. As a faded member of the institution that is—for the most part—incapable of balancing comedy and analysis of mental illness, the titular character (voiced by Will Arnett) in the animated Netflix sitcom tries to manage his pain through attempts to find solace and context in those around him: A pink Persian cat/agent, a freeloader, yellow Labrador Retriever/rival, and a Vietnamese-American feminist/human ghostwriter who herself is spiralling into depression. Like many manic depressives, BoJack self-medicates, and though this is certainly played for laughs, moments born of his depression lend themselves to salient and sobering moments of self-realization that are rarely found in a sitcom, like, “You know, sometimes I think I was born with a leak, and any goodness I started with just slowly spilled out of me and now its all gone. And I’ll never get it back in me. It’s too late. Life is a series of closing doors, isn’t it?” Compelling reality, straight from the animated horse’s mouth.

Animation lends itself to intelligent consideration of something so difficult and inherently personal because as an audience (and as creators) the idea of sadness can exist in the abstract. The static nature of animation in The Simpsons and BoJack Horseman provide a forum for discussion, which allows the audience to filter mental health through the transcendental. One of the most difficult aspects of depression is recognizing it, and perhaps we, as an audience, find it easier to recognize it in an anthropomorphised horse than in a mirror.

Sitcoms are not typically a place where we confront ourselves. Sitcoms love to gloss over more serious conversations when given the opportunity to use them to evolve their narratives. Depression is a walking nightmare; it’s an attempt to quiet a screaming cancer while everyone watches the tumour grow. The TV drama makes it a character flaw or a tick, often treated as an affectation or virtue. Dr. House is depressed as a result of his atrophied leg, but a genius. In Scandal, Millie becomes depressed after the death of her son, but predictably recovers. In Nashville, Juliette suffers from post-partum depression, but will inevitably return to country music stardom. In all of these cases, and so many more, depression is the result of something. It has a cause that the character can address directly. The depression is almost tangible, a character with a background story who can be operated on, prosecuted, persecuted, killed off or written out.

But depression doesn’t have a cause. It’s born of nothing. One day it just exists. There is medication, but there is no cure.

Enter Aya Cash.

Cash’s portrayal of Gretchen’s spiralling depression in this season of You’re the Worst is nothing short of brilliant. I was an unabashed fan of the first season of the FXX sitcom, but I had concerns about how the re-imagination of the boy-meets-girl story would play out after boy (Chris Geere’s Jimmy) and girl (Cash’s Gretchen) moved in together. It seemed like the world of You’re the Worst may have had nowhere to go other than devolve into farce. And that would’ve been fine, but unspectacular and certainly unambitious—two regular traits of sitcoms seen in recent additions to the genre (Truth Be Told) or inexplicably still airing (2 Broke Girls) trading on recycled jokes and premises. But somewhere in episodes 3 and 4, the show took an unexpected turn concerning Gretchen’s clinical depression. And somehow, magically, creator Stephen Falk and his staff of writers have managed to take a serious and precious subject that the sitcom form has been mostly incapable of disseminating and used it to increase the show’s narrative scope while still being the funniest thing on TV outside of MSNBC debates.

What’s most impressive about You’re the Worst’s use of depression is that the world of the show has continued on despite Gretchen’s pain. The series hasn’t paused its narrative to focus solely on Cash’s character’s spiral—plot unrelated to her illness is still featured prominently. And therein lies the horrible truth of depression: The world doesn’t stop for it. So, while Gretchen falls apart, the universe the show has created goes on, with the characters Sunday Funday midday day drinking exploits, Lindsay’s (Kether Donohue) frozen semen, visits from Jimmy’s family and his temptations with infidelity, and Edgar’s (Desmin Borges) burgeoning relationship. While a lesser show would try to make the entire season about Gretchen, You’re the Worst instead allows her depression to exist within the show, and in so doing finds one of the most true and realistic depictions of mental illness to ever grace the small screen, and certainly the best to ever be on a sitcom.

The frustrating futility of a disease without a cure is beautifully depicted in episode 9, "LCD Soundsystem." Gretchen stalks a seemingly perfect couple, whose idyllic life she idolizes and aspires to. They have the nice house, the cute baby, the cool jobs—an aesthetic that suggests happiness and the life she believes she could have if she weren’t sick. But in a dose of reality that mimics the crushing severity and impossibility of mental illness, the couple ends up being as flawed and disappointing as Gretchen’s own existence. The husband is lecherous and desperate, hitting on Gretchen and dismissing his perfect life and family. The couple fight. The moment when she—and the audience—realize this is equally familiar and heartbreaking, while Jimmy (as many acquaintances of the depressed are) is wonderfully oblivious, and the look in Cash’s eyes in that instant are Emmy-worthy if ever a performance was. Without dialogue or animation, Gretchen’s eyes suggest a deep and resound loss, as if helplessly watching the very notion of ever being happy sink slowly into a dark and vengeful abyss

This is where the peerless brilliance of You’re the Worst’s recent season can be found. In episode 3 Gretchen misses her old "posse" and throws a party to reunite them. In episode 4 she sneaks out of the house in the middle of the night, where (we discover in episode 6) she has gone to cry alone in her car. Carelessly, and without warning, Gretchen and the audience are confronted by her depression. That violent and graceless fluctuation is perfect effigy of the sudden onslaught of mental illness. And though there will be laughter around Gretchen as the season progresses, Cash’s character exists in frightening isolation, familiar to those who have suffered from a similar affliction.

There are still a few episodes of You’re the Worst left this season, and who knows how many years of the show and its universe. I’m curious how it will deal with Gretchen’s depression and balance the tropes of the sitcom. Television is escapism. It is not the responsibility of artists to adhere to the audience’s needs. The sitcom is a form of expression, and a way of taking some small microcosm of common existence and giving those who actually exist in it a moment of solace. Cash’s performance is a caring tribute to those who suffer from mental illness, and a lesson for other sitcoms on how television can be ambitious and funny while respecting both the audience and the medium. Certainly humour may be found in dark and troubling places, but so can understanding and compassion. A well-crafted sitcom can respect its traditions—and audience—while aspiring to new modes of employing the genre.

Mike Spry is a writer, editor, and columnist who has written for The Toronto Star, Maisonneuve, and The Smoking Jacket, among others, and contributes to MTV’s PLAY with AJ. He is the author of the poetry collection JACK (Snare Books, 2008) and Bourbon & Eventide (Invisible Publishing, 2014), the short story collection Distillery Songs (Insomniac Press, 2011), and the co-author of Cheap Throat: The Diary of a Locked-Out Hockey Player (Found Press, 2013). Follow him on Twitter @mdspry.