Cinema! (and more)

I love writing about movies. Sometimes it's quite easy to write about films, or a particular film. I've found that writing about Godard's works is quite easy, probably because Godard is an intellectual using film as the primary medium with which to explicate his philosophy and ideas, as opposed to someone who seeks primarily to entertain or to express emotional content in some way. I know that's a gross generalization, but there you have it. In contrast, I can't even begin to describe how I think and feel about Ozu's work, and not just because it's all so subtle that thinking about it too hard almost makes it fly away in the breeze. For as feeble a writer as I, descriptions of Ozu's films become reduced to dry analyses of his unique approach to camera angles, the positioning of actors, 'dead space', and his frequent use of offscreen time in which he propels forward his plots. This is all quite fascinating to those of us with brain defects that predispose us to such things, but I would surmise the mass audience would find more enjoyment reading over the minutes of an urban planning conference.

What prompted this little soliloquy was the jarring of my memory of an older Olivier Assayas film, L'Eau froide (Cold Water) a masterpiece which remains unavailable on DVD w/English subtitles anywhere in the world. I caught this film a couple of years ago as part of an Assayas retrospective, and the gentle yet insistent quality of the film eventually left me breathless by its end. The genuineness of the writing and the performances and the unobtrusive grace of the photography combined to create a portrait of late adolescent freedom cum desparation that I've never seen portrayed with the same degree of honesty in any other film.

My frustration lies in the fact that the feelings engendered by L'Eau froide are so palpable that I can almost feel them in the same way I'd feel a rock in my shoe, yet I can't possibly find words to describe them. Adding to this frustration is that I know almost as a fact that these feelings must be universal to anyone who was ever a teenager, so why can't I form the sentences that would connect the reader with this film? Is it my inadequacies as a writer, or is it the elusiveness of the subject matter that is the obstacle?

All this is a quite long-winded way of explaining to myself why I'm having so many problems writing about La Regle Du Jeu, which I have long believed to be the greatest movie ever made. My strong belief in the greatness of that film is built upon my attitudes that it contains as close to the totality of human experience as any film possibly could. Included in its words and images are love, jealousy, grace, compassion, duplicity, weakness, strength, bigotry, and ultimately, forgiveness. On one hand I think that I can't possibly explain all this, but on the other hand, how can I not at least try?

Oddly enough I have no such problems writing about La Grand Illusion, Renoir's other accepted 'masterpiece'. While I won't deny it's greatness, and even though it has more depth and subtlety than almost every other film ever made, compared to La Regle Du Jeu it's as plan and obvious as a streetwalker. Accordingly I have no problem explaining why I think it's so great. Each character, each event, each major scene, these are all rather obvious metaphors for the state of Europe pre-World War One. That Renoir was able to make this, the greatest of all war films, without showing a single battle, and indeed, without even providing us with even one unsympathetic character, let alone an actual villain, testifies to his majesty among all directors.

In the meantime, my little essay about the Rules will have to wait.