Le Navrie Night (1979)

When it comes to art cinema, and slow cinema, I often think of an ideal viewer that must exist who is 100% alert and awake, and intellectually keyed into the symbolism and poetics that might take place. But then again, why should I judge myself against an ideal viewer that doesn’t exist? If you fall asleep, you fall asleep. Rewind and re-watch. If something goes over my head, I can just zero into what makes me think, or feel. Or even just appreciate the aesthetics, and the intention. That something like this strange art film exists.

Late at night and I couldn’t sleep, lying in bed listening to music, before I decided to decamp into the living room and start watching something. When I selected the Marguerite Duras film to watch, Le Navrie Night (1979), from the Rarefilmm website, I was hoping it would fit the circumstances. And in the first five minutes, I knew it would. The opening narration talks about the stillness in a night, the silence, and the proceeding film feels like it lives in that stillness, despite how talky it is. Cameras pan across empty spaces and the story is about two lovers who only communicate over the phone during the night. It was an ideal circumstance to watch, sleepless in the morning hours and existing in the film’s poetic reverie.

Duras is an author and her approach as a filmmaker seems to prioritise the power of words, taking a postmodern approach to the medium. There are a lot of distancing effects. The story is told mainly by voice-over with Duras telling the narrative, not from a first person perspective but describing the characters in third person. A country estate is the location of the film shoot, and we see the film lights in the corner of the room. Three actors are assembled (Bulle Ogier, Mathieu Carriere, and Domnique Sanda). They ask questions to the off-camera director of the stories being told, and one by one we see them getting make-up applied in close-up as they sit in silence. But they don’t play the roles written. They are mainly visual points of interest in the frame as the story is told over the narration. Sitting, or standing, as the camera pans around the house’s interior. Though a writer by trade, Duras and her collaborators also create great film images. There’s a slow shot of a camera panning down the seine river at dusk which I thought was especially beautiful.

The story? Two people fall in love over the phone, and their relationship is only carried out through late night telephone calls. There are complications involving sickness and class, and the effect is hypnotic. It is slow cinema and I did have to pause the film and fall asleep on a couch before resuming. The micro-nap was satisfying and when I woke up, I returned to Le Navire Night and continued watching. I didn’t necessarily feel a strong connection to the story of the lovers, their trials and tribulations, the confusions and the doublings of identities. I was more taken in by the way the story was told, the empty spaces outside, or in the outskirts of Paris, the slowly panning camera as the voices talk over the images. Or the actors standing in the frame. Or the wooden table lit gloriously within the darkened living room. Duras and her crew create an overall mood and an atmosphere of haunting loneliness, and the hook of a spoken word, even if it’s faceless and transmitted across time and space. Recommended.

Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)

In Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003), there’s an obvious contrast between the 1960s wuxia film being screened, Dragon Inn, and the dilapidated cinema where its being shown; the faded film stock of adventure and action compared to the mundane stillness of empty cinema seats and rain dripping from the ceiling. Within Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang’s slow cinema style, the mundane stillness is rendered just as cinematic as a classic martial arts film through his framing and sense of space. For me, the static shot of the cinema lobby at night as it rains outside, water collecting out the front, is visually stimulating and absorbing; Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a very meditative experience, marked by emptiness and melancholy. This is the last night that the cinema is operating and there’s not much of an audience for this revival screening. Half of the handful of patrons seem to be there to cruise strangers for sex. One of the key feelings this movie produces is anticipation, particularly for the young Japanese tourist (Kiyonobu Mitamura) we follow, who continually tries to pick men up, and there is constant tension in the attempted passes and ignored signals. Meanwhile, a woman with a club foot (Chen Shiang-chyi) mainly operates the theatre by herself as the projectionist (Lee Kang-sheng) remains absent. This is pretty much a silent movie with most of the dialogue being what we hear in the 1960s martial arts movie. I watched a very decent copy on YouTube at home one night, and outside it started raining, providing a sensory surround experience, even if I wasn’t in a cosy, aged cinema theatre. I thought Goodbye, Dragon Inn was as great as people had always proclaimed. You can see why in that it offers Ming-Liang’s glacial arthouse approach at a short running time of 86 minutes, and it speaks to the power of movies and the cinematic experience by highlighting its faded ruin and degraded state, which balances and keeps in check the obvious nostalgic pull for the past. With comic moments of patrons eating wings loudly, or someone sticking their bare feet up on a seat, it doesn’t view the cinema experience as wholly transcendent; there’s something real and banal about the way other patrons are viewed, alongside its moments of ghostly hauntings and tearful reflection from forgotten movie stars. Definitely creates a space and a mood that feels inviting to return to, even in its rain-soaked sadness. Recommended.

Je Tu Il Elle (1974)

One haunting image from the film, Je Tu Il Elle (1974; I You He She), is when Julie, the young woman played by the director, Chantal Akerman, has shifted furniture out of her ground floor apartment, and has moved her bed against the wall. Sitting against an alcove in the corner of the room, near the main window, Julie is cast in shadows within this cheap-looking white room. As the light fades outside, the image darkens and Julie almost visually disappears. Akerman’s film is shot in black and white, and has a stark simplicity in locked-off master shots. We’re stuck there with Julie, almost observing her as an exhibition. Then there’s a rigorous formalism and commitment to boredom here, to slow cinema and existing in dragged-out moments through unbroken, static shots. Je Tu Il Elle has three basic acts and it’s the first act that sets the film’s tone as we just sit with Julie existing in this room. We hear voice-over narration that anticipates the proceeding action, sometimes delivered, a few times contrasted with surprise. Julie sits or lies down, writes letters, and rewrites them, takes off their clothes and stands nude by the window, and eats spoonfuls of sugar from a paper bag. I must admit my attention drifted sometimes and I was lulled into the occasional sleep. It’s taxing, but it puts you in this character’s headspace – boredom, depression, ennui. It is a relief when we shift to the next parts – the second act being Julie hitch-hiking on the road and spending time with a sleazy male truck driver (Niels Arestrup), where she’s a mostly silent passenger, either in the truck or in the bars they frequent, and the third act, being a reunion with Julie’s past lover, an unnamed woman (Claire Wauthion), and the fleshy slap of their bodies together in the climax’s prolonged sex scene. The first act is so important in setting up the interiority of the character, and the contrasts in their relationships with two different characters, and the sexuality displayed. I am really taken with Chantal Akerman’s artistry and work as a filmmaker; each movie I see of Akerman’s feels of a piece with their long-life obsessions and themes, but are also portraits of a time in their lives, this film in particular feeling very representative of an early twenties experience. I watched the Criterion Collection DVD of Chantal Akerman In The 70s – though the film is also available on Criterion Channel. Recommended.

Radio On (1979)

I’ve never had a strong urge to travel. I’m happy to, when we could, but never felt that strong wanderlust. Over the past two years though, I’ve fallen more and more in love with movies that travel. A certain type of arthouse vibe that’s not about sight seeing or having a good time. Usually it’s just about being loney, drifting and occasionally connecting. The Meetings Of Anna, In The White City, Kings Of The Road and now Radio On (1979). With Wim Wenders as an associate producer and key music featured being Kraftwerk and Bowie’s Berlin period, there’s a heavy German New Wave influence to this forgotten, debut movie directed by British writer turned filmmaker Christopher Petit. Britain is not known for known for being great road movie fodder and here in black-and-white cinematography, the experience of driving from the depressing urban landscape to the foggy countryside is not exactly about escape or release. Radio DJ Robert (David Beames, excellent) is already a silent, shiftless sort. When he hears that his brother has died, which is the opening sequence of the movie, taking in an empty apartment with a dead body in a bathtub while ‘Heroes’ plays on the soundtrack, Robert gets into his car and travels to Bristol for some answers. We hear songs often in full as we drive along the highways and country roads, though the sound mix alternates between being in the car and outside the car depending on the shots, so even listening to a song is never given a full consistent sonic experience. As with any other road movie, there are encounters – a ex-soldier hitchhiking, a German visitor (Lisa Kreuzer, Wender’s wife at the time), and even an Eddie Cochrane obsessed petrol pumper (Sting!) – and there’s an eventual end, though no real resolution. For some, this will be a boring movie where nothing happens. But I was really into its monochromatic mood and depressed vibe – visually, it feels like you’re seeing a sequence of beautiful photographs or flipping through a series of album covers. Great soundtrack – the opening credits give the songs featured more space and time than the cast and crew get – also featuring Robert Fripp, Ian Dury, Devo, Wreckless Eric and Lene Lovich. I purchased the Fun City Editions blu-ray but its also on Criterion Channel to view. Recommended.

Cemetery Of Splendour (2015)

What I most want from an art movie is to be taken to somewhere else. Another part of the world, yes, but also taken to another way of seeing. Cemetery Of Splendour (2015; Rak Ti Khon Kaen) is only my second film that I’ve watched from Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul (after Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), but it was perfect viewing on a day when I was home, recovering from feeling sick, wrapped up in a blanket on the couch. Shot in Weerasethakul’s home town of Khon Kaen, it follows a middle aged woman, Jenjira (Jenjira Pongpas) who volunteers at a make-shift hospital established in a building that used to be her childhood school. In the hospital are discharged soldiers stuck in a condition of constant sleep. There’s a mystery as to why they cannot wake up and even further wonders around the light therapy equipment brought in to supposedly provide the soldiers good dreams while they sleep – technology represented by glowing light tubes that change colour next to their beds. As Jenjira tends to a soldier without any visiting family, Itt (Banlop Lomnoi), and starts to talk to him in his sleep, the patients with visiting family are supported by a psychic (Jarinpattra Rueangram) who helps the families communicate with their sons or husbands. Weerasethakul, along with cinematographer Diego Garcia, frames everything in master shots and keeps people in the middle distance, only springing a few close ups for maximum visual impact. Along with the lack of music score and the sound design of nature, kids playing, tractors digging up the field next to the hospital, there’s something reserved and everyday about the visual approach. Even though an ancient god might casually visit your table and announce themselves or a strange alien shape might be glimpsed in the sky. It’s a meditative film and open to interpretation. I’m sure there are specific details and ideas about the landscape and the culture I might be missing, but I connected to the sense of companionship between Jenira and Itt across their conscious and dreaming states. To me, I also felt a real subtextual theme about the military presence, the history of conflict from ancient gods to wars decades old, and the hope for an end to all of it. I don’t know – there’s something both beautiful and prosaic about what Weerasethakul puts to screen here – the prosaic becomes invested with even more meaning with how its collapsed together with surreal touches. Available to stream on SBS On Demand. It’s quite something and I’m still getting my head around it. Recommended.