Thursday, 29 October 2009

Der Himmel über Berlin (1987), Wim Wenders


****

Columbo! Nick & Cave and the Bad Seeds! Wenders has packed up this wonderful 2 hour poem about (eternal) life with magnificent cameos. This film was later raped by Hollywood in the City of Angels. But Wings of Desire (UK title) is much more than a story about an angel who fells in love with a mortal ballet dancer. In fact so much more that it leaves one speechless. Seeing is believing and sometimes it's not necessary the explain things away. This is certainly one of the cases.

Friday, 16 October 2009

L'annee derniere a Marienbad (1961), Alain Resnais

****
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054632/
















A cinematized psychoanalysis session (more blatantly so than Hiroshima, Mon Amour), pointing the camera not at the couch, but at the probed unconscious. Haunting. And often so textbook Freudian it’s not even funny. Or it is funny.

After Hiroshima and this, I think Wong Kar Wai is Resnais' somewhat less abstract successor in a way.