Comments on: My 10 Worst Films Of 2008: 2: Silent Light

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:10:39 +0000

Spirit of the Beehive was ultimately a success for me as most of the curious choices of focus could be interpreted as a child’s-eye-view of the world: a different sense of what’s interesting or compelling. Though many of the scenes didn’t even have the child present, so I don’t know I was on the right track or just clutching at straws in my quest to rationalize the choices of content.

In general I am wary of this kind of things though. There’s a scene in Gus Van Sant’s Cobainesque movie Last Days which ends with the camera panning slowly away from the action and coming to rest on a nondescript bit of roadside greenery for about a minute or two. Is the implication that the camera is as spaced, alienated and/or out of its box as the central character? Buggered if I knew.

One film I did really like that used alternate criteria for what the camera considers interesting is oblique Hungarian murder mystery Hukkle: as far as I could tell what was going on there is a camera lens that represents an alien’s point of view that has no strong idea of what’s interesting and what isn’t. Because it has no prejudice towards focusing on the human story that is going on in the village where the movie is set, the audience has to pay quite close attention to discover what the “plot” is from background clues, and becoming a detective in that way turned out to be quite a lot of fun.

By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît

a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:36:01 +0000

haha i just discovered that the present-day mennonites are WANNABE LOLLARDS who (some of them) attempt a historical martyred-apostolic succession back to jesus via the CATHARS and their (imagined) predecessors

By: Lennie

Lennie — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:05:04 +0000

The Happening. THE HAPPENING.

By: Ewan

Ewan — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:56:13 +0000

I like all of the above mentioned films. I think if you have problems with El Espiritu de la Colmena, you won’t much like El Sol del membrillo (The Quince-Tree Sun), which I love, but is almost entirely composed of long stretches of a man painting (watching paint dry, quite literally). And let’s not even go near Bela Tarr or Chantal Akerman in that case, eh?

But no, I agree re the ending to Silent Light, it’s a little bit too Ordet, yes? I mean, everything that Reygadas was reaching for had been done already by Carl Th Dreyer, and more than half a century ago at that!

Yet on the whole I liked the mood. But I have a high tolerance for the long-take not-much-happening style.

By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît

a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:25:20 +0000

spirit of the beehive is 20 billion trillion times better than days of heaven

By: pete

pete — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:14:07 +0000

Thing about Spirit Of The Beehive, I liked it a lot despite its ponderousness. But then I realised than rather than watching a film about a young girls reaction to seeing James Whale’s Frankenstein, I’d much rather watch Frankenstein meself like.

By: Mark M

Mark M — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:54:17 +0000

Re 1: See also Days Of Heaven – enough wheat fields already (picks up with the fire, mind).

By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:15:53 +0000

I had a similar response to “Spirit of the Beehive” by Victor Erice which I saw a few months ago. Incredible cinematography, a great performance from 6-year-old Ana Torrent, and yet… it’s the sort of film where the camera lingers on a guy putting a kettle on a stove to boil for a few minutes. I don’t know much about art, but I know what I find hard to like.

Never watched a Reygadas film to my knowledge but from all the descriptions I’ve read he sounds intimidatingly, aggressively auteurish.