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Jan. 31st, 2014 01:34 pm1. Crazy Stupid Love
One of those movies where everyone involved knows it's terrible, so the clues in the title are presumably deliberate self-sabotage. The bar was pretty much that silly one from Angel Season 1 where Elizabeth Rohm did her breathing.
2. La Jetee
A. Sherlock 3.1
Fan service nearly crowds out the actual mystery plot. Hope that's not true of the others.
3. L'argent
Um. The Forged Coupon didn't end that way. Which probably means you should read it before ever watching this, as the adjustment is pretty much the point.
"Things are in the saddle and ride mankind" is the takeaway, with it being left entirely unclear whether there's a way around that, even anything else to do with one's time. The utilitarian robber character, a brief ray of hope, turns out to be just a muddled nihilist. But the movie itself is muddled, as you should expect whenever Dostoevsky hijacks Tolstoy, or whenever Bresson's handed a camera. Got used to the aesthetic after a while, even the scrape-clank-crackle-tap incessance, which fit things' being of the snake. And what Tolstoy there is gives Bresson some plot coherence for a change (again, only if you've read the story) as compared to the numbing repetitions of Pickpocket and the donkey movie. Kind of looks like Bresson lost God sometime between the latter and this one, as this is the kind of movie the lead in Winter Light might have made: religion overexposes things, but an abrupt loss doesn't correct this, just takes all light away. Which is why a sane world would prioritize keeping it away from children. Not doing so is responsible for far worse things than tedious Bresson and Pasolini pictures.
You can read the end as a divination of secular, uninsured morality, but the logic by which it's reached is Dostoyevskian nightmare logic, if so, and not the actual kind which, like, underpins that morality. Bresson's procedures are pretty much the worst for conveying anything legitimately psychological, which is presumably what spiritual types like about them: non-actors (or non-acting actors) put us somewhere where the sorts of nonsensical changes of mindset religion trades in make as much sense as anything else these walking brooms do.
Winter Light's far greater value is in its being an assessment of religious loss, and not just a symptom. Bergman passim, really.
One of those movies where everyone involved knows it's terrible, so the clues in the title are presumably deliberate self-sabotage. The bar was pretty much that silly one from Angel Season 1 where Elizabeth Rohm did her breathing.
2. La Jetee
A. Sherlock 3.1
Fan service nearly crowds out the actual mystery plot. Hope that's not true of the others.
3. L'argent
Um. The Forged Coupon didn't end that way. Which probably means you should read it before ever watching this, as the adjustment is pretty much the point.
"Things are in the saddle and ride mankind" is the takeaway, with it being left entirely unclear whether there's a way around that, even anything else to do with one's time. The utilitarian robber character, a brief ray of hope, turns out to be just a muddled nihilist. But the movie itself is muddled, as you should expect whenever Dostoevsky hijacks Tolstoy, or whenever Bresson's handed a camera. Got used to the aesthetic after a while, even the scrape-clank-crackle-tap incessance, which fit things' being of the snake. And what Tolstoy there is gives Bresson some plot coherence for a change (again, only if you've read the story) as compared to the numbing repetitions of Pickpocket and the donkey movie. Kind of looks like Bresson lost God sometime between the latter and this one, as this is the kind of movie the lead in Winter Light might have made: religion overexposes things, but an abrupt loss doesn't correct this, just takes all light away. Which is why a sane world would prioritize keeping it away from children. Not doing so is responsible for far worse things than tedious Bresson and Pasolini pictures.
You can read the end as a divination of secular, uninsured morality, but the logic by which it's reached is Dostoyevskian nightmare logic, if so, and not the actual kind which, like, underpins that morality. Bresson's procedures are pretty much the worst for conveying anything legitimately psychological, which is presumably what spiritual types like about them: non-actors (or non-acting actors) put us somewhere where the sorts of nonsensical changes of mindset religion trades in make as much sense as anything else these walking brooms do.
Winter Light's far greater value is in its being an assessment of religious loss, and not just a symptom. Bergman passim, really.
