A Woman in Trouble

                                Bizarro film maudit, messy minor masterpiece, or maybe both at once, Andrew Dominik's anti-biopic would if nothing else pass with flying colours David Letterman's "Is This Anything?" test. It is absolutely and unmistakably something, even if, one might reasonably argue, it has only slightly more to do with Norma Jeane Baker née Mortenson than, say, Gus Van Sant's Last Days had to do with Kurt Cobain. The narrative momentum of both films is propelled forward by something like Freud's death drive, though in Blonde the race to the grave is stopped and stalled and sporadically rerouted by weird variations on the pleasure principle and an Electra Complex literalized ad nauseam. While David Lynch's films may be read profitably as grotesque/sublime Francis Bacon-esque reservoirs of Freudian signification, Dominik pushes that symbolism further still, in search of...well, what exactly? 

I'm not sure that Dominik is sure any more than the real Norma Jeane was ever very sure of what it was she wanted out of Marilyn Monroe, life, or her various relationships. But she was a fantastic actress, both comic and dramatic (see esp. her thoroughly wrenching work in The Misfits!). She wasn't ever only an iconic pop-cultural cipher. Dominik ungenerously short-changes her in this crucial regard. Thankfully Ana de Armas recognizes Monroe's sparkling performative brilliance and with her wholly embodied Norma Jeane/Marilyn rediviva(e) heroically saves this movie from an abyss of sadistic, misogynistic cruelty to which Lynch's work has also at times veered dangerously and discomfitingly close.  Instead, our hearts break again and again for de Armas-as-Norma-Jeane-as-Marilyn –– and not least in the otherwise profoundly stupid JFK scene. Adam Nayman writes that "in terms of sheer, visceral unpleasantness, Blonde has nothing on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me." He may be right about that, but let's hope it doesn't take critics and other discerning viewers quite as long to catch up to the perverse charms and merits of Blonde as it did for Lynch's most misjudged great film to begin to get its due. 

IN MEMORIAM

Just by coincidence last night I re-read Jonathan Rosenbaum's essay "A Cinema of Uncertainty: Films by Michelangelo Antonioni" (1993). At the beginning of this piece, Rosenbaum names the twelve greatest directors in the world, "not so much personal favorites as individuals who, in [his] estimation, have done the most to change the way we perceive the world and are likeliest to be remembered and valued half a century from now." It struck me that of the dozen men cited twenty-nine nears ago only two remained living. 

And now, sadly, just one (Hou Hsiao-hsien). 

When, nineteen years ago, I created this blog, I chose Jean-Luc Godard as half its namesake not because he was my personal favourite director, but rather because – apart from sharing two-thirds of my initials – Godard seemed to me the quintessential brilliant, prickly, serious, artistic filmmaker. I had sought out aggressively every Godard movie I could find (then, mostly through Ebay, snatching up VHS tapes and bootleg discs), seen probably 15 or so, and just read Colin MacCabe's Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy, which cemented my impression of this iconoclastic giant of post-war European art. I was an admirer and a convert.

For still younger generations who regard cinema/cinephilia as much as a religion (encompassing art, politics, history, philosophy, almost all facets of life) as did Godard's Nouvelle Vague peers, JLG was something of a mythic high priest. Yet, unlike many revered elderly figureheads, Godard remained utterly vital to the last, creating a series of astonishing films in the twenty-first century that rival or surpass his more famous '60s heyday. 2001's Éloge de l'amour, the first in that late-career renaissance, was one of the first movies I ever wrote about at length – a review that, evidently, has mercifully vanished from the memory of the Internet. 

While I don't necessarily agree with the logic of Rosenbaum's above-quoted criteria for defining the world's greatest filmmakers, it certainly fits for Godard. He has genuinely and significantly impacted the way that I, and many other people, perceive the world; and there is no doubt at all that his name, reputation, and oeuvre will endure –– far beyond a mere half-century. 

Sic transit gloria mundi. 

 

This year's EuroBasket has been terrific! Such high-level, intensely competitive basketball, nearly every game – much more so, in fact, than many early-to-mid NBA regular season games, which are sometimes phoned in or missed entirely by stars given time off for rest. 

One could argue, too, that Eurobasket 2022 included the three best players in the world right now at this moment, although Jokić/Serbia was knocked out by Italy in a super exciting game earlier today. But, as I write this post, we could still very conceivably end up with a Giannis vs. Luka championship game a week from now! 

Je veux celui que je ne peux pas avoir