LOST IN THE NIGHT

This is the first time in history that I’ve watched something by Amat Escalante and didn’t walk away amazed in some way. I’m a little conflicted. Without question this might be his most beautifully shot film to date. Seriously – from the opening frame to the closing shot everything is crafted & framed as if it was shot by 70’s era Nester Almendros (lots of sunsets, magic hour, etc). Now…The basic premise is interesting but gets lost in the end.
A common theme for a lot of new releases I’ve watched this year involve the story falling apart in the second half and Lost In The Night is no exception. But regardless of how “imperfect” this may be, there’s still something special about it that got me to write down my initial thoughts. The story of Lost In The Night is about a young man infiltrating a system in an effort to solve the mystery of his missing activist mother. Naturally class divide plays a huge part in this story (like all Escalante films) but this is his most in your face film about classism & corruption in Mexico.

The problem is that by the end of the movie, the missing mother and her activism are almost forgotten about. 

Our main character is supposed to be solving this mystery/cover-up but he gets sidetracked by a love interest. Young men have historically been known to lose sight of a goal over the attention of a woman but this seems pretty egregious. I dunno…maybe I missed something?


It should be noted how, more than ever, modern architecture is used in Mexican cinema (and just modern cinema in general) to represent “evil”. I don’t like this blanket belief system that any design that’s modern equates bad or elitist or out of touch. But that’s just the modern design student in me.

When we’re introduced to the wealthy family that might have been involved in the disappearance of the protagonist’s mother, police are on the scene. There’s this subconscious association with modern architecture and criminality…

Lost In The Night

Escalante’s mentor/former collaborator also does this with Post Tenebras Lux. Our first glimpse of modern design is associated with a husband & wife having marital problems… 

Post Tenebras Lux

The Mexican film Time Share takes place in an ultra modern setting where everything goes wrong.

Time Share

Some critics have called Lost In The Night “Lynchian” but to me - it’s a combination of Carlos Reygadas meets Chantal Akerman (we seriously need to abolish the Lynchian term). I guess it's considered Lynchian by some because there's a shot like this in the film? 

Lost Highway / Lost In The Night

Escalante is on record numerous times name-dropping Akerman as a source of influence...

Whenever we shoot a film, there’s always a shot that we say, ‘oh this is the Jeanne Dielman shot,’ because there’s always someone at the sink washing dishes. It’s a sad anecdote but when we were shooting The Untamed, there’s a scene of a woman washing the dishes and we were filming her from behind. The day after that, I read on the news that Chantal Akerman had died. The day she died, we were shooting and said, ‘this is the Jeanne Dielman shot. - Amat Escalante, extraextramagazine.com

Jeanne Dileman / Lost In The Night

Jeanne Dileman / Lost In The Night

Another Akerman-esque moment from Lost In The Night...

Hotel Monterey / Lost In The Night

This does have replay value and I will certainly revisit it a few more times before the year is over. Right now I’m just a little underwhelmed. It’s like watching an A student get a B-/C+on a test. But that could all change after another viewing.

CUCKOO

I didn’t think Cuckoo was bad but it was definitely made by someone that thinks they understand late 70s/early 80s Cronenberg when in fact they’re way off in their understanding of his ideas. 

I really can’t highlight this tweet below enough:

Without giving away too many spoilers, Cuckoo really is what someone would think is an updated take on The Brood. This isn’t an exaggeration. Even the final moments of Cuckoo are literally the final moments of The Brood right down to the ominous zoom in on the surviving child. The film involves murderous feral children birthed from a mysterious surrogate and an Oliver Reed-esque scientist/borderline cult leader (but instead of things being told from the perspective of the father, we see things from the view of an angry teenager).

Again - I didn’t think this was bad I doubt I’ll never make an effort to watch it again. My time and money weren’t wasted at the theater but one viewing is enough for me.
In the same way Oz Perkins may have felt like he was doing a respectful homage to Silence Of The Lambs with Long Legs (…he wasn’t), Tilman Singer thinks he’s doing a proper homage to Cronenberg when he really isn't.

I know this all sounds arrogant as if to say “I understand Cronenberg better than the director” BUT…in this specific case - it’s like if a 17 year old thought; “you know what would make The Brood better? A shootout in the end! Just two crazy guys shooting at each other with machine guns” (I’m aware guns are fired at the end of The Brood but it’s nothing like in Cuckoo). Imagine if a young filmmaker thought; “what if Shivers made absolutely no sense at all??”

The Brood / Cuckoo

The Brood / Cuckoo

The Brood / Cuckoo

And this is my problem. Movies like this force you to be that annoying person to call out the stupidity & silliness within the plot when you don’t really want to. I’m fine with something that makes absolutely no sense but the movie needs to start off on that foot. Cuckoo doesn’t do this. The first 3/4 are building up to something and then the final quarter just throws the little bit of logic out the window. Now you’re forced to go “so wait - what’s the point of all this?” Only for some pretentious dork to go “WHO CARES ABOUT MAKING SENSE?” Well…in the case of Cuckoo, Tilman Singer cared about making sense until the last half hour. As the viewer I’m just following the director’s lead.

Much like when something is barely weird or slightly “off” it gets called Lynchian, anything with any type of body horror element gets labeled Cronenberg-ian. Now…Cuckoo actually is Cronenberg-ian but that’s not a good thing in this case. Influence isn’t always a positive. This is Cronenberg-ian for bad surface reasons. Instead of taking away any type of deeper understanding from stuff like The Brood (a story that was birthed out of personal family drama between David Cronenberg and his first wife) or Shivers (a clever take on sexually transmitted diseases and promiscuity), it’s as if all Tilman Singer got from those films was gore and shocking imagery. I think Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Evolution (2015) did a much better job at whatever I think Singer was trying to do with Cuckoo.

There are some positives. Jan Bluthardt does give an entertaining supporting performance as the detective investigating the homicides within the film. But it isn’t enough.
Overall I’ve been disappointed with this recent string of new horror films. Between this, I Saw The Devil and multiples viewings of both Long Legs and In A Violent Nature - you can’t say I didn’t try.

THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD

I think it’s safe to say that The Saddest Music In The World is what got Guy Maddin his biggest spotlight at the time. At least that’s how it seemed to me. Not only was this heavily pushed on home video and in constant rotation on the IFC channel, but it was his first film to feature more well-known actors (it should be noted this was the start of Guy Maddin & Isabella Rossellini’s ongoing 20+ year partnership). Frank Gorshin & Shelly Duvall do appear in his 1997 feature; Twilight Of The Ice Nymphs but, due to how different that film was compared to the rest of his work at the time, it sort of became the forgotten Guy Maddin movie within his filmography…

You could walk in to any Blockbuster or Hollywood video and rent one of his movies. This wasn’t always the easiest thing to do. His films had been released on DVD prior to this but distributors like Kino and Zeitgeist weren’t always the easiest to come by as they mostly specialized in “art house” films which weren’t in high demand at your average video store chain. Now…mom & pop video stores may have carried Maddin’s earlier films but those types of stores were few and far between by the early/mid aughts (speaking from personal experience - I lived in southeast Virginia between 1999-2004 and couldn’t find any of his films to rent until moving to the tri-state area in late 2004).

At the end of the day, it is my opinion that video store chains like Blockbuster were ultimately a negative (click here to read why), but being able to discover the work of Guy Maddin was one of the positives.

As accessible as Saddest Music was, it still features all the standard ingredients that go in to a typical Guy Maddin film: Cucking, Kink-shaming, leg obsession, Canadian pride expressed mostly through hockey and tons of visual homages to older films. His style was not compromised in the least bit.

This is the third Maddin film we’ve looked at this year so far so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that his films are full of references & homages and Saddest Music is no exception…

Fellini

I had been life-alteringly ardent about a number of Fellini films - Guy Maddin, uofitlaian

Juliet Of Spirits /
The Saddest Music In The World

Dziga Vertov 

I loved THREE SONGS ABOUT LENIN and MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA - Guy Maddin, UAlberta 

Man With A Movie Camera /
The Saddest Music In The World

Man With A Movie Camera / The Saddest Music In The World

Man With A Movie Camera /
The Saddest Music In The World

Buñuel

I feel kind of Buñuelian - Guy Maddin, Offscreen.net

The Exterminating Angel / The Saddest Music In The World

Tristana /
The Saddest Music In The World

Von Sternberg

People might be saying I was inspired by those geniuses. Particularly Von Sternberg, who I was watching rabidly, just before and soon after I first picked up a camera - Guy Maddin, Screen Slate 

Docs Of New York / The Saddest Music In The World

Busby Berkeley 

I wanted to be Busby Berkeley, for crying out loud! I wanted to have chorus girls stomping their heels in my casting office - Guy Maddin, theQuietus.com

Whoopee / The Saddest Music In The World

(In addition to Maddin’s obsession with legs - the musical numbers in Saddest Music also pull from Busby Berkeley)

David Lynch

It goes back to when I first saw Eraserhead and started looking up every interview possible with David Lynch - Guy Maddin, criterion

The Amputee / The Saddest Music In The World

Homages aside - the story of Saddest Music In The World is quite unique. Maddin weaves the story of a music competition with a love entanglement/cuck-ish relationship between a father, his two sons, a beer baroness and a flighty songstress. …And it’s a musical! There’s a lot going on here (all under 2 hours), but this might be Maddin’s most “fun” film to date.

On a previous entry I noted that Cowards Bend The Knee might be the best entry point for Maddin beginners but I’m starting to think Saddest Music is the safest bet. This isn’t his “best film” (although it will always have a special place in my heart because this was my entry-point in to Maddin’s work), but it’s certainly his easiest feature to digest and work your way backwards in to his filmography. You can see the seeds of Saddest Music and his love Bunuel all over his earlier work…

The Criminal Life Of Archibaldo de la Cruz / Archangel

Tristana / Archangel