FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / April 2020 / Gabriel Ricard
Image © Barunson E&A | CJ Entertainment
Are you a huge tool if you disqualify movies that come with subtitles? Of course not. Something tells me I’ve probably talked about this before. Yet it seemingly demands repeating. Watch more movies with subtitles. You’d be amazed at how quickly it becomes part of the actual rhythm of what you are watching. There is a point (and most of us can get there) where it will cease to be reading. You get the added bonus of getting not only every piece of dialog, but you also get the texture of language existing with the sounds and images simultaneously. I’m not trying to sound sarcastic, and I realize I’m getting close to pretentious.
It just seems weird that we’re still arguing about this. If you can watch a movie with subtitles, I think it’s worth the effort. Anything to slow down the increasingly unnecessary English remakes of unique foreign films. There is also a really good chance that you’ll stop feeling as though no one is making good movies anymore. That is patently untrue, and it is our ever-widening access to films from non-English-speaking parts of the world which help to emphasize how untrue that really is.
I also support dubbing films like Parasite. The technology is a hell of a lot better than it used to be, and it would bridge the gap for people who cannot watch movies with subtitles for legitimate reasons, while perhaps even connecting to the stubborn few.
I’m not trying to be judgmental here. I’m just exhausted with telling people that good movies are still being made and released all the time. With just the tiniest effort on your part, you could see exactly what I’m talking about.
However, if you make fun of those who are fine with subtitles, and have no real reason for avoiding them yourself, I’m probably going to think you’re an asshole. Well, almost certainly.
The Lighthouse (2019): A+
Image © A24
Directed and co-written by Robert Eggers, The Lighthouse is such a creepy, unpredictable and oddly humorous entity. I was surprised it didn’t score a single Oscar nomination for writing, directing, or acting; it did receive one deserved nom for cinematography though. But it’s too different and completely committed to its own surreal brand of entertainment to ever be a serious contender. I don’t think that disqualifies Eggers himself from such awards in the future, but The Lighthouse is definitely not for everyone.
Part of that is simply because Eggers, along with his brother Max, refuse to let us remain comfortable—even for a moment. This is true in the pacing of the movie, in the development of its plot, and in the evolution of its characters. Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattison—I’m excited for his take on Batman—play two men who are forced to develop bonds as two men on a remote lighthouse. Even their relationship is difficult to pin down, although it gives the movie some deeply disconcerting moments of dark comedy. Stylized and abstract, The Lighthouse never falls into pretentious or ponderousness. It is a fantastic mix of the nightmares induced by the mind against the nightmares induced by reality. Nothing is to be taken seriously, but everything is as serious as a dozen lonely heart attacks.
Things Behind the Sun (2001): B+
Image © Echo Lake Productions | Showtime
Writer/director Allison Anders has put music as a distinctive backdrop for a wide range of compelling human dramas over the years. Things Behind the Sun, which includes a soundtrack composed by the legendary Sonic Youth, is perhaps the most difficult example of Anders doing this as a filmmaker. It tells of a rock critic (Gabriel Mann) who learns that a recent chart-topper about rape has profound connections to his past and present.
The woman who wrote and performs the song (Kim Dickens, who brings to unforgettable life a character whose richness and trauma run hand-in-hand) is rapidly destroying her life with binge-drinking and abusing the compassion of her boyfriend (Don Cheadle, excellent as always). The song is simply a reality; living through the day it happened (which is presented in flashbacks) over and over again in song is not resolving anything. When she meets with this journalist, who knew her when they were both younger and happier, the opportunity for resolution presents itself. If not resolution, at least confrontation with a trace of hope.
Things Behind the Sun is not a simple, clear-cut story about a woman who was brutalized by a group of men. I cannot say for sure what your experience with the movie will be but I can promise it will stay with you.
I Lost My Body (2019): A+
Image © Netflix
The best animated film of the past year (sorry, Toy Story 4), I Lost My Body tells a deeply human, relatable story under gently surreal circumstances. A hand, removed from its owner—in this case, a young man in love with a girl—makes the difficult journey of trying to reconnect. Along the way, it remembers everything that brought it to the separation. There is something hilarious and gently saddening about this concept.
It is also obviously a macabre way of discussing youth, love, the pursuit of purpose, and loneliness. Yet the movie balances its stranger touches with fantastic ideals and truths. The animation itself is fast-paced, and often reveals touches as clever as anything in the story or characterizations. Jérémy Clapin has co-written and directed one of the most singular animated films you can find on Netflix. I can’t recommend it enough. Even the English dub version, featuring the voices of Dev Patel, Alia Shawkat, and George Wendt, is absolutely beautiful.
Doctor Sleep (2019): C-
Image © Warner Bros. Pictures
A film I was genuinely anticipating, I can’t really say for sure why Doctor Sleep misses the mark for me in so many ways. I always saw the potential behind revisiting The Shining’s Danny Torrance as an adult. I enjoyed Stephen King’s follow-up to what is arguably one of his most celebrated novels. I also saw Mike Flanagan, one of the most consistently inventive horror directors, as being the perfect choice to tell the complex story of Danny’s past and psychic powers returning him to prominence with some very important, mostly dangerous, individuals.
Yet something seems to keep Doctor Sleep from ever really getting started. I keep wondering if the running time (the theatrical cut is 152 minutes) is to blame. However, I also wonder if the longer (181 minutes) director’s cut will give added depth to elements I found to be shallow. Danny’s return from the brink of oblivion, as well as his relationship to a young girl (Kyliegh Curran, with the film’s strongest performance) whose power may be even greater than his own, are a couple of examples of things I found frustrating.
Still, there are some fascinating themes explored here. This is in addition to the respect paid to King’s original Shining novel, while simultaneously understanding that many will come to this expecting connections to Stanley Kubrick’s controversial adaptation of King’s most personal novel. The fact that Flanagan balances these things so well, particularly in the film’s final act, makes Doctor Sleep worth watching.
In the end, this is perhaps another example of unrealized potential—at least, as far as I seem to be concerned. I can promise you this: I will watch it again. There is more than enough here to suggest I’m simply not getting it the first time around.
Parasite (2019): A+
Image © Barunson E&A | CJ Entertainment
There is clearly an Oscar roundup theme running through much of this month’s column. I’m also a little surprised that for the second time in my adult life, one of my favorite movies of the year won an Oscar (Moonlight is the other one). The only movie I liked more in the 2019 calendar was Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood. However, I think overall, Bong Joon-ho’s black comedy horror movie about the relationship between a wealthy family and a working-class family is the superior film.
Really, it isn’t even fair to compare the two. Parasite is a slow descent into the ugliness people can imagine and carry out. It brutalizes the romanticism of wealth in terms so understandable, the film is finding audiences among those who rarely watch foreign/subtitled movies.
The film’s deceptively simple commentary is highlighted with a gentle-yet-furious build to its overwhelming conclusion, which itself is punctuated by occasional bursts of energy and mania that were as disturbing to me as anything else I saw in more straightforward horror releases over the past year.
If you really can’t stand the notion of subtitles, in terms of pure preference, I ask you to consider going against that just once for Parasite. It is worth watching on its own terms for a myriad of reasons. At the same time, I’m more than happy to use it as a gateway to a larger world.
Parasite is a good example, among other achievements, of just how large and varied the total universe of film really is.
Gabriel Ricard writes, edits, and occasionally acts. His books Love and Quarters and Bondage Night are available through Moran Press, in addition to A Ludicrous Split (Alien Buddha Press) and Clouds of Hungry Dogs (Kleft Jaw Press). He is also a writer, performer, and producer with Belligerent Prom Queen Productions. He lives on a horrible place called Long Island.
