THE SCHOOL OF TARKOVSKY: ALEXANDER SOKUROV

Solaris / Maria

Tarkovsky’s work was rather a confirmation of my own vision - Alexander Sokurov, film comment

Stalker / The Second Circle

This post isn’t meant to reduce the relationship between Tarkovsky & Sokurov down to just a bunch of visual comparisons. They had a relationship that started as a mentor & mentee and slowly evolved to genuine friendship outside of just movies (Sokurov has dedicated books, films & essays to his late friend).

But, coincidental or not, some of the visuals between the two filmmakers are so striking that I couldn’t help myself and I compiled a bunch of side-by-sides that I thought were interesting…

The Mirror / Maria

Solaris / Mother and Son

The Mirror / The Lonely Voice of Man

The Mirror / The Lonely Voice Of Man

Andre Rublev /
Days Of Eclipse

The Mirror / Mother and Son

Solaris / Father and Son

The Mirror / Father and Son

The Mirror / The Lonely Voice of Man

Andre Rublev / 
Days Of Eclipse

Ivan’s Childhood / Days Of Eclipse

The Mirror / Taurus

The Mirror / Taurus

The Mirror / The Second Circle

The Mirror / The Second Circle

Nostalghia / Taurus

Starker / Whispering Pages

Nostalghia / Taurus

Nostalghia / Taurus

Stalker / Taurus

Stalker / Taurus

Nostalghia / Taurus

Solaris / Taurus

Nostalghia / Faust

Nostalghia / Faust

Nostalghia / Whispering Pages

Nostalghia / Whispering Pages

Nostalghia / Whispering Pages

Solaris / Elegy Of Voyage

The Mirror / The Lonely Voice Of Man

Sacrifice / Mother and Son

Solaris / Oriental Elegy
 

BEST OF 2024

Like every year, I contribute my best of the year movie lists to various blogs & podcasts. In addition to the links & videos below, I made a point to write about almost every movie this year on my list (Hard Truths being the one exception), so make sure to explore and click around within the 2024 tab (on the right) to keep with with everything I watched last year...

THE BRUTALIST

With the exception of one particular scene that I thought was really on the nose & unnecessary but also strangely important to the story, I thought The Brutalist was very good. It deals with a few things that are directly attached to my life. Now…there’s nothing I hate more than when someone makes personal relatability to a movie the determining factor as to whether it’s good or not, but architecture & design has been an integral part of the majority of my life. In addition to having an unhealthy obsession with cinema, I’m also an architectural draftsman. I’ve worked as an interior designer, furniture specifier, architectural assistant and a CAD operator but at the end of the day it all comes back to drafting (it’s also just easier to tell people that I'm a draftsman as there are a lot of parts to my job/career that are long-winded and unnecessarily complicated). I say all that to say there’s an additional layer of understanding I think I might have over the average viewer. Not to sound too gatekeep-y, but it would be odd if I didn’t mention my background in architecture & design.

It’s also sometimes incredibly frustrating reading about architecture & design from the perspective of people that don’t know what they’re talking about. Specifically modern architecture and practical add-ons. Anyone can have an opinion on whether they feel a building is ugly or not. But sometimes their opinions are a little uninformed. I come from the practical side of architecture & design so it’s difficult to listen to some people wax poetic about how they would have made the Barclay’s center better when they haven’t taken a class on space planning or city planning (although in fairness - I’m not a fan of the Barclay’s design myself).

Modern architecture is vilified now more than ever. Anything new or sleek-looking that doesn't have a thousand little gothic details is always associated with something evil or bad. Whenever something isn’t a dusty cluttered Brooklyn brownstone it’s considered an eyesore or ugly. People have no clue that the reason a large (sometimes out of place) HVAC unit is attached to the side of a building is partially to blame on the original design and there’s no other choice but to put a large blue metal unit on the exterior because it’s the only way to provide heat to a school...

The Brutalist does sometimes have an outsider’s surface-level romanization of what architecture & design can be, but I’ve come to the realization that’s always going to be the case and it’s just unavoidable. It is what it is. People want to see beautiful buildings and someone hunched over a drafting board with beautiful sketches and deep contemplative thoughts. No one wants to sit through a 3-1/2 movie about code violations, drafting techniques and failed inspections. I do acknowledge this criticism is kind of unfair. I know most folks don’t want to see a boring procedural movie about anything. People want to see the pretty final product. Totally understandable.  

The film’s lead character studied at the Bauhaus institute and we see a good amount of Mies Van Der Rohe-style furniture designs in the first section of the story (van der Rohe was a former director at the Bauhaus).

I know I’m being overly nitpicky towards the architectural side of the story because this is the closest I get to feeling authoritative towards something. But keep in mind I’m not even a licensed architect and I have a lot of personal resentment towards the career path I’ve chosen. Truth be told, I came in to this movie with preconceived notions ready to hate but I was pleasantly surprised). Try to remember that I led with calling this film very good. And to be fair, the film dedicates a good amount of the story to the sketching, planning & red tape that comes along with the construction process (it does take two decades for the film’s main architectural project to reach completion). There are a few scenes where our lead architect throws a fit because of a code-related change to his original design. Adrien Bordy's Laszlo Toth is a complicated man. One minute he's an egomaniac and the next minute he's a helpless child. 

Architecture & design aside, this movie is kind of a one-sided twisted made up love story that’s all in the mind of the film’s antagonist. Without spoiling too much, Laszlo Toth isn’t “The Brutalist”. It’s Guy Pierce’s Harrison Van Buren. Like I eluded to earlier, the character of Van Buren is very on the nose and the relationship between he & Laszlo is an almost elementary school level metaphor on the relationship between America and how they treat immigrants (it’s also very clear that Van Buren is weirdly in love with Toth but expresses it in a very…brutal way).

Brady Corbett’s story of an immigrant coming to America in hopes of a better life is nothing new. Only his approach. I’m also in shock that this thing was made for only six million dollars. It has the same grandiose scale of a Christopher Nolan film but with a bit more “soul”.

This film certainly passes the look test. A movie like The Brutalist has to be at least visually pleasing. Thankfully it is and then some. A good chunk of the the movie feels like an architectural exhibit and I’m honestly not mad at that (the movie does end with a literal architectural exhibit dedicated to Toth's work). No matter how naive I feel the film’s approach towards architecture & design can sometimes be - it’s clear Brady Corbet has a genuine love & respect for the craft. This is probably the best modern film dealing with design since Peter Greenaway’s The Belly Of An Architect.

MILK & SERIAL

Found footage horror movies can be insufferable and often times dumb, but every few years or so a new film comes along and manages to do something slightly new within the genre that I like. Nothing groundbreaking or “genre reinventing”. Just fun and entertaining. At this point, a big part of making a watchable/somewhat believable found footage movie is finding a new-yet-logical explanation as to why someone keeps the camera rolling during the chaos. Today, everyone is always filming & posting themselves on all forms of social media so that part of the story is kind of easy to pull off. Someone is streaming and/or going live at any given moment. There’s also an even bigger uptick in youtube/Instagram/tik-tok prank videos which, staged or not, are usually mean-spirited & cruel. And they only get more & more cruel because each prankster wants to outdo and one-up the last person. Everyone wants to go viral. I’m kind of surprised more modern horror films haven’t capitalized on this subject matter instead of all the easter egg/symbol-heavy grief-porn horror films that currently plague the genre. 

I know this sounds preachy on my part but folks are incredibly desensitized and have a warped sense of reality now more than ever. Likes, followers, and going viral are equal currency to some folks. Curry Barker’s Milk & Serial touches on all the mean-spirited online pranks and the desensitization of young people without being too preachy and finger wagging...

A Clockwork Orange / Milk & Serial

This is bound to be compared to the cinema of Quentin Tarantino due to it’s non-linear format, but this reminded me of a really good hour-long Mr Show sketch where the twist has an additional twist (the film centers around a prank inside of a prank that goes too far between a group of friends). Curry Barker is a young cinephile so the usual unavoidable suspects like; Tarantino and a base-level understanding of the violent side of Kubrick are all within the DNA of this movie but it would be unfair to stop there (it also shouldn't even need to be said but Quentin Tarantino didn't invent non-linear storytelling). There’s more to this movie than non-linear storytelling and visual homages to classic cinema. Young creatives aren’t always given the credit they deserve. Older folks like to sometimes underestimate the creativity of younger people because there’s this unwritten rule that anyone younger than you doesn’t know anything. But in my opinion, Milk & Serial is way more mature than you’d expect (especially considering it was made by someone in their early 20s). The music, the tone, the ambiance, everything. This is the kind of film that could be a gateway to stuff like early Haneke. Milk & Serial certainly has the same mean-spiritedness of something like Benny’s Video or Funny Games… 

Benny's Video / Milk & Serial

After a recent re-watch I'm really starting to suspect Barker might be a fan of Haneke's late period stuff as well...

Benny's Video / Milk & Serial

A coincidental callback to possibly the most popular found-footage movie ever...

The Blair Witch Project / Milk & Serial

The final moments are also similar to the final moments of the pre-found footage classic; Man Bites Dog

Man Bites Dog / Milk & Serial

This is an hour-long youtube movie so I completely understand why it didn’t get the same hype as something like Cuckoo, Late Night With The Devil, Longlegs or even In A Violent Nature, but if you’re looking for an alternative to all the disappointing horror films from this year (sorry but almost everything that’s been hyped up this year was a letdown for me personally), Milk & Serial is easy to access.

A FEW WORDS ON PERFECT DAYS *UPDATED*

Wim Wenders’ latest is one of those films that’ll be miscategorized as “simple”, “light” or even “boring” to those that watch it casually or on a surface level. But beyond the time-filling hobbies and Jeanne Dielman-esque day to day routines of the film’s main character lies a heavy story about regret and making peace with the past.

Putting aside the excess baggage and semi-ambiguous family drama of the film’s main character, I find myself wanting to live the life of someone like Hirayama. He’s a simple man that takes pride in his job, loves music on cassette and spends his free time taking photographs of trees. Having outlets & serious hobbies other than your job/work/career is incredibly important to one’s sanity. I can personally attest to this. My obsession with digging for things like music & movies keeps me sane. Hirayama’s love of photography, trees, physical media and cozy local bars keeps him sane. If he didn’t have those things he would be left alone with his thoughts of loneliness and the strained relationship with his family (it should be noted that his niece does make an effort to have some kind of a relationship with him).

Under a different director, the character of Hirayama would be a cartoonish iteration of Robert Crumb or Harvey Pekar. A curmudgeon that hates his own hobbies and prefers to be alone due to his hatred of most people. But Wim Wenders shows the positive side of niche hobbies and spending time alone. 

Interestingly enough, Perfect Days is a film that plays in to my personal hobbies and healthy obsessions. On one hand, this is very much Wenders’ own movie but it also serves as a love letter to one Yasujiro Ozu. There’s lots of visual comparisons to be made form this film.

Autumn Afternoon / Perfect Days

of course Ozu's Spirit looms largely over the movie - Wim Wenders, Tiff.net

Tokyo Story / Perfect Days

I saw TOKYO STORY, and I stayed for the next three shows [of Ozu's films] that day until I stumbled out of the theatre late at night. I'd never seen anything that had so much shaken my world - Wim Wenders, AnOtherMagazine

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

A Story Of Floating Weeds / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Equinox Flower / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Good Morning / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Tokyo Chorus / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Good Morning / Perfect Days

Good Morning / Perfect Days

Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family / Perfect Days

Tokyo Story / Perfect Days

I’ve never taken Wenders for a Tarkovsky guy, but this particular moment from Perfect Days (on the right) feels like an homage to the highway scene from Solaris (also shot in Japan).

Solaris / Perfect Days

There’s even a coincidental connection to Wenders’ former mentee Jim Jarmusch (I like to imagine these two guys exist in the same universe)

Paterson / Perfect Days

 

Perfect Days feels timeless with tons of replay value and is slowly becoming my go-to movie to put on when I can’t think of anything else to watch.