http://www.metrotimes.com/screens/story.asp?id=14202
A wonderfully creepy anti-Nazi inferno; Godard's visual treatise on
morality and prostitution
By Metro Times film writers
7/22/2009
The Cremator
Dark Sky
When, exactly, was the last time you saw a film and thought, "I've
never seen anything like that before." Sure, some sense of uniqueness
is difficult to find in cinema anymore, and the average moviegoer
doesn't give a damn about challenging narratives and unabashed
artistic flair, like those found in French New Wave and early films
by Roeg or Polanski or Russell. And where are all the directors who
create true cinematic visions?
Fortunately, the 1968 Czech art-house gem The Cremator is now on DVD
to show (remind?) us of what we've been missing.
Karl Kopfrking (ghoulishly played by Rudolf Hrusinsky) is a cremator
in late '30s Prague. He likes his job, lives a comfortable life with
a loving family. He also has some strange OCD quirks, such as his
obsessions with cleanliness and Tibet, and how he combs his hair with
the comb he uses on the deceased at the crematorium.
The impending Nazi invasion heightens Karl's weirdness; he once
viewed his job as a soul-freeing endeavor, now he thinks he's a
divinely appointed purifier. He finds anti-Semitism useful for
climbing the corporate ladder and a novel excuse to bump off his own
Jewish wife and kids.
Director Juraj Herz uses every cinematic trick in the book fisheye
lens, quick edits, skewed camera angles and extreme close-ups to
paint a surreal and atypical landscape of one man's descent into
spiritual lunacy. How you interpret The Cremator is part of the fun.
Is it a black comedy about Nazism? Maybe it's horror about those
obsessed with their own mortality and death? Or is it a shrewd
observation about middle-class values? Either way, you likely haven't
seen anything like it before. Paul Knoll
--
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her
Criterion
In the densest movies of Jean-Luc Godard, you know you're being
lectured, but it's often not clear what you're being lectured about.
The director's '60s socialist cocktails, 2 or 3 Things I Know About
Her included, fall into this category, made ever more convoluted by
his period propensity for impatient spontaneity and documentary
digressions. But there's a reason 2 or 3 Things has been a
long-awaited DVD title unlike, for instance, the pretentious Made
in USA (which is also out this month from Criterion) and Le Gai
Savoir. It's because it's one of Godard's most infectiously
imaginative and endlessly watchable films, boundless in its ideas and
creativity.
The film stars Marina Vlady and Anny Duperey as young French
socialites dabbling in prostitution to cover the expenses of
middle-class life, but there's no real story to speak of, because
Godard is too busy questioning the foundations of storytelling. A
journey through a car wash and even a trip to buy a sweater are
fodder for deconstructionism, with Godard breaking down the language
of cinema into a cinema of language. "Language is the house man lives
in," is one of the film's numerous pithy quotations, spoken by a
character before she slyly acknowledges the camera.
Politics, Vietnam and economics are obligatorily addressed, with
Godard using associative montages to compare his young housewives'
trick-turning with the bulldozing progress of Parisian street
construction. Its closing shot suggests the whole film is a symbolic
indictment of consumerism, and there are several witty jabs at
consumer products throughout: "If by chance you can't afford LSD,
then buy a color TV," Godard himself deadpans in his whispered
narration, the irony being that the bold colors in Godard's
Cinemascope are usually more garish than anything on television.
But the film's most beautiful, and justifiably most discussed,
sequence is one divorced from any social or political agitprop. In an
exciting foray into experimental abstraction, Godard trains his lens
on an extreme close-up of a hot cup of coffee, which in a series of
shots resembles a black hole, a sonogram, sperm swimming toward an
egg, bubbling acid, and a Petri dish under a microscope. It's pure
cinema magic, popularly reimagined a decade later by Martin Scorsese
in Taxi Driver.
The bonus features do neat justice to an indelible film. A vintage
French TV interview with Vlady reveals how tiring it can be to
receive direction from Godard. (Aside from the work of Anna Karina,
who ever talks about the acting in Godard movies?) In another
archival TV piece, Godard engages in an enthralling debate about
morality and prostitution with a surprisingly honest and conceding
government official.
The disc also includes audio commentary by Adrian Martin, a
thoughtful essay by Amy Taubin and a new video reflection from
Godard's old confidant, playwright Antoine Bourseiller. But the best
supplement is titled 2 or 3 Things: A Concordance, a 10-minute
cataloguing of the myriad references and quotations hidden within the
film, which helps a great deal in understanding Godard's influences,
thought process and ideology at the time. John Thomason
.
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