🎬 #143 Film Is A Vehicle.
This week focuses on films, each in their own way, that celebrate the power of what film can achieve. It can take us into POV’s we never imagined, into places we never dreamed and at the same time, make us aware of how emotionally similar we all are.
Happy choosing, happy viewing
Bry
FILM ONE: BABYLON
2022 Dir Damien Chazelle
3 hr 09 mins
Not sure why it took me so long to watch this film but I’m really glad I did. Also, not sure why it was marketed as a kind of rompy, lighthearted comedy either - while there are elements like that, that’s not the film I saw. This has all of Chazelle’s trademarks. Big scale, emotionally motivated camera movements, majestically soaring around, through crowds of revellers in the wild parties of early Hollywood, and a cast of dreamers - and there’s a grandeur to the dreams of those dreamers that we travel through this world with.
The film charts the rise and decline of several characters through the silent period into the talkie period. The editing is sharp as a tack, the longer than cameo cameos from Spike Jonze and Flea are great, the love that the filmmakers all have for film as an art form is evident on the screen. This is epic scale filmmaking about passion for film and filmmaking, about what it can achieve that few other art forms can achieve. It can take us out of the myopic view of our lives, and catapult us somewhere else. It’s a vehicle for escapism, it’s a unification, a recognition that we are all, on some level, moved by similar things. It reminds us that we’re all part of the grand sweep of humanity in a wonderful way.
TL;DR: Chazelle’s epic ode to film is a devastating watch.
*Available for a small rental fee on Amazon and Apple in the US and Amazon in the UK. Also available to stream on Netflix in the UK.
Fact: Damien Chazelle has a version of the film that he shot in his garden with his iPhone, where he, his wife and Diego Calva play every role.
FILM TWO: SHERLOCK HOLMES JR
1924 Dir Buster Keaton
45 mins
From an epic about the silent era transition to one the biggest stars of the era. This film is also, in a lot of ways, about the love of film. Keaton’s character the ‘Projectionist’ works in a cinema as a projectionist, no surprise there, but he also moonlights as a private detective. And he soon finds himself caught up in a crime that jeopardises his relationship with a woman he adores.
But what’s so magical about this film is the pace and timing of the jokes, and the strength of the visual storytelling. Keaton’s legendary physicality is on full display too, as he navigates being the accused and not the one hunting them down. The standout sequence for me is one in which he dreams himself into a film that’s playing in the cinema. He literally gets transported into this fictional world unfolding on the screen. The execution is inventive, inspiring and gripping - and not just because you think ‘wow that’s good for what they could do then.’ This sequence is genuinely ingenious. It reminds us of the magic of going to the cinema.
TL;DR: Keaton’s love of the possibility of film is clear in his take on the detective tale.
*Available right here
Fact: Keaton fractured his neck during the train stunt. Maybe one of the most ‘relaxed’ stunts he’s ever performed, they had obviously underestimated the force of the water raining down on his head. He only discovered the injury years later when he had an X-ray.