La Dolce Vita

Well, it's taken me five months of turning it on, getting bored and turning it off, but I've finally done it. I've finally finished "La Dolce Vita." And if that achievement means anything, it means I'll never have to see it again.

Watching this movie was like an endurance test. I'll gladly sit through a six-hour miniseries like "The Best of Youth;" "The Decalogue," ten hours of the Ten Commandments, is at the top of my NetFlix queue, very closely followed by nine hours of Holocaust memories in "Shoah;" heck, I'd even like to see the 15-and-a-half-hour-long "Berlin Alexanderplatz" when they release it on DVD in November. But I could hardly stand a comparatively lean three hours of "La Dolce Vita."

In three hours of screentime, nothing much happens. A self-hating journalist covers various stories, hangs out with his friends, abuses various women, and parties all night long. Somehow, nothing really happens in three hours of screen time. On a discussion board I go to, a lot of people said that "The Great Gatsby" was "a bunch of rich fucks bitching and moaning about how much it sucks to be a rich fuck." I guess that's what "La Dolce Vita" felt like: A journalist covering celebrities bitches and moans about how empty his life is.

I can't tell if the movie had a point, but if it did, it probably has something to do with the cult of celebrity. Apparently, Federico Fellini could see the future of Hollywood and the tabloids, with photographers trying to take pictures of a woman as she learns her husband's gone crazy and killed their kids, or trying to take pictures of various stars. If that's the message of the film, then it's sure irrelevant now, since anybody with common sense knows what sick things papparazzi are. (And yes, I know that "papparazzi" comes from the character "Papparazzo" in this film, and no, I really don't care.) Maybe if the film had a spark of life to it, I could forgive that, but it doesn't. It's simply tedious.

I've tried 2.05 Federico Fellini films (this, "La Strada," and I gave up about five or ten minutes into "I Vitelloni"), and I've disliked them all. Call me a snob, but I don't want to sit through movies by somebody without something to say. (Unless, of course, the movie is entertaining, which I haven't found Fellini's films to be.) In both of the movies of his I've sat through, it felt like the movie wasn't trying to make a point, or if it was, it didn't know what the point was.

All the same, I can't help but think, "Maybe I should watch some more of his movies, just to be sure." Maybe I've been brainwashed by too many readings of Ebert's "The Great Movies" books, but for some reason, I can't just dismiss Fellini off of two movies. Maybe I should check out "Amarcord," or maybe try and finish "I Vitelloni," or maybe I could wait for "Juliet of the Spirits" to show on TCM, or...

No. No, no. Fellini's films are just too slow. Somehow, he managed to make movies where I get bored after watching maybe two or three minutes of it. It's like he went out of his way to avoid having plots in his films. I might try and subject myself to a few more of his films, and maybe I'll find a gem, like what happened when I kept watching Kurosawa films. On the other hand, maybe life is too short to sit and watch movies from people I find dull.

The Best of Youth, Part 2

In re-reading my review of "The Best of Youth, Part 1," I feel like I may have written about it in too-romantic terms. You probably feel that way, too. And yet, it's all true. It's epic, it's joyful (although it's sad as well), it's beautiful. I guess that everything I said about Part 1 is true for Part 2.

I think that's where I'll stop. There's really no more to say about the film than I've said already.

The Best of Youth, Part 1

I'm going to start this review off like pretty much every other review of this film: It's not really a film, but a six-hour Italian miniseries. And now, for two revelations: One, I've yet to start watching it (this first paragraph came to me before I started); and two, this review is going to be in two parts thanks to NetFlix shipping the discs one at a time, and due to the backwards nature of a blog, this means that in the archives, Part 2 will come before Part 1. Weird, but what can I do? Now, on to the movie.

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Most kids these days are impatient. They want what they want, and they want it now. How would they sit through something like "The Best Of Youth," which I just finished the first part of, without pausing for a drink, a snack, a bathroom break, or anything? Well, I managed. Sure, there were brief interruptions (when you live with your family, that happens when you watch DVDs), but not once did I pause the film. I never got bored with it, something that didn't happen with a slightly shorter film, "Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring." And if I had the second disc right now, I'd start watching it after only a brief intermission.

It is, as Roger Ebert pointed out in his review, an ambitious film. It's six hours long and it follows two brothers over four decades of their lives. You could easily think that such a film would be exhausting, maybe gloomy, or any other negative adjectives that come to mind. And yet this is one of the most moving films I've seen in quite a while (and keep in mind, I'm not even finished with it yet).

Matteo and Nicola start their journey away from home by planning to go to Norway for the summer with two of their friends, but they get sidetracked when Matteo discovers that a patient at an asylum he works for, Giorgia, is being electroshocked. So he breaks her out (a rare instance of cliche in the film, the old "the-patient-would-be-better-off-out-of-the-asylum" bit, but here there's actually a reason for it) on an ill-fated quest to take her home to her father. However, when she refuses to produce her nonexistent ID when asked by policemen, she is taken away and the brothers may never see her again.

That, on its own, could make for an interesting film, yes? Well, that's just in the first hour of "The Best of Youth." Matteo leaves for home and joins up with the army, while Nicola goes on to Norway alone... but to give away more would be wrong. There's so much story here that it's no wonder it had to be a six-hour miniseries: Compressing it into the form of a two or three-hour film would not only be fundamentally wrong, it's probably too difficult a task to contemplate. Oh, sure, you can summarize the events, but for their full impact, they need the time to develop.

And oh, what a time it is. This is a joyful work so far. It is almost like watching select moments from the lives and times of two real brothers instead of two fictional ones. The film has an eye for those moments in life where you chuckle at the little jokes life plays with you--not "on" you, realize, but with you. Sure, there are sad moments, but they're woven in just as they would be in life.

I may have to watch this part again before I send it back to NetFlix and get the second act, both to keep the events in mind and to experience them all over again. I almost wish I'd rented it at a traditional rental store, so as to get both discs and to absorb it all as a whole instead of as two parts. Alas, such is life.

As for recommending it, if you think you have the patience to sit through it, you probably should see this film. If you're the kind of person who enjoyed "Jules & Jim," I think you'll probably enjoy this.

Battleship Potemkin

This is one of the most legendary films of all time. It helped to popularize the montage, which many films since have taken for granted. It's been voted as one of the greatest films of all time.

And I was bored during it.

Why? Was it the action sequences? No; action sequences can be interesting if they have a point. Was it the pro-communist viewpoint? No; that hardly mattered. Rather, it was the Worn-Out Experiment Syndrome: When you view a movie hailed as innovative and can't see why, because the techniques it developed have been so absorbed by the mainstream that it's invisible.

This isn't always bad. "Jules & Jim" used many techniques that I could hardly spot during the film, and yet it worked nonetheless. However, there the film worked because the story came first and foremost. Here, the techniques were pretty much the entire reason I watched it.

The story, for those who don't know: A bunch of sailors get Revolutionary Fever for reasons I don't recall. When they refuse to eat meat that an apparently corrupt doctor declares okay (despite maggots crawling around on it), they're to be killed. When this is about to happen, the other crew members help them out and throw the higher-ups off the ship.
They then proceed to Odessa, where they lay to rest one of the few sailors who was killed. The people cheer them on. This apparently gets the attention of the local authorities, because soon, a firing squad opens fire on civilians. (You know the baby-carriage-down-the-stairs scene from "The Untouchables?" This is where they got that from.)
The Battleship gets away and has to go through a squadron of battleships. They prepare to fire, but end up not having to; the other sailors cheer them on.

As you can tell, I'm confused by what happened in the film. Maybe my copy was butchered, but several loose ends are left untied. For example, Moses seems to be on the Battleship near the beginning. I have no idea of why; maybe I missed something. But after about two scenes, he disappears, with practically no effect on the plot. What did I miss?

Also, the ending makes no sense. Why do they have to go through the squadron? Why do they prepare to fire at them? Why do the sailors cheer them on? (I could understand that if they felt threatened they might cheer just to save themselves, but if I recall correctly, they're cheering with Revolutionary Fever.)

Is it me? Am I intolerant of silent films? I have gotten bored by one other ("The General" [!]). But that wasn't it. If the film had sound, I'd still have been confused and bored.

So what did I miss? Was it my copy of the film (by Image Entertainment)? Was the film entirely reliant upon the montage technique (which nowadays is practically invisible to modern audiences)? Could someone tell me? Is anybody reading this?

Russian Ark

For those of you who haven't heard of this one, here's the basic thing you have to know about it: It's a film about a guy who seems to wake up outside a Russian museum (the Hermitage) and explores it with a French Marquis. The thing about it is that it's all done in one shot. ("One take" gets the point across better, but it's also misleading--they actually did four takes, the first three of which were aborted and the fourth one being the final product.) For most people, the people who love films like a friend, hearing that a film was done in some kind of experimental way is like hearing that your car has a different kind of engine--you don't really care, as long as it works. But for people like me, people who love films as a spouse/mistress/life-partner, it's an intriguing premise. So how does it work out?

Well, the plot isn't quite as good as one would usually hope. There's no love story, no action sequences... heck, there reallly isn't any conflict in it--it's mostly a guy (the camera) wandering around a museum, sometimes following another guy, looking at some art, occasionally watching the other guy talk with people, and and eventually watching a dance. It's very mired in Russian history, but for a pure American like me, it's pretty much going to all be a bunch of random people in historical costumes. So most filmgoers would probably get very, very bored by this film.

But what about the one-shot thing? Does it work? Well, I guess. It is all one shot (although they kind of fudge it a little near the end with a special effect to put a sea where there isn't one), and as an experiment, it succeeds. But it's rather tough on the audience. At times, the camera's turns are dizzying, as are the times that the camera zooms out while it's moving forward and causes a trombone effect (or, as I like to call it, the "Vertigo" shot). But overall, it's a neat effect.

So do I recommend it? That depends. If you're really into experimental films, you should probably see it--it's not often this kind of thing is done anymore. If you're looking for a good time, you may want to exercise caution. And if you buy Dramamine a lot, you'll probably want to avoid it.