“…If it is true to say that, in essence, the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.” — Arthur Miller, “Tragedy and the Common Man” (The New York Times, Feb. 27, 1949) How should we grieve? When faced with inconceivable loss, most of us become amateurs, fumbling in the hope of recovery. Grief tends more to ugliness than elegance, and it has a nasty habit of overstaying its welcome. For Lee Chandler, […]
With his last film, 2013’s Sacro GRA, Italian Gianfranco Rosi became the first documentarian to win the Golden Lion at Venice. He was also the first doc director to win the Golden Bear at Berlin with Fire At Sea, a disciplined, urgent look at the migrant crisis anchored on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, whose proximity to the African coast has made it a target destination for those fleeing their countries. It takes a while before the migrants appear onscreen: initially, Rosi divides his attention among various islanders, including a radio DJ whose tunes are heard all over the island […]
Occasionally a movie has the look and feel of something totally original, immediately allowing one to see the protean leap its maker has taken from novice to master. Someday, when the American movie landscape is no more, simply the purview of art historians who live on Mars or on ocean front property in what we used to call Indiana, people will still regard Barry Jenkins’s startlingly effective Moonlight as a unique and supple flower, the kind of heartrending experience that gives rise to the notion that motion pictures can be a lasting, emotionally resonant art form. Drawn from MacArthur “genius” […]
There are only a few minutes of calm at the beginning of Mia Hansen-Løve’s fifth feature Things to Come. In a prologue two years before the film’s narrative kicks off, philosophy professor Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert) is on seaside vacation with longtime partner Heinz (André Marcon) and children, a stroll reminiscent of the family outing that kicks off her sophomore film, 2009’s The Father of My Children. In both films, this stroll prefigures much strife to come: shortly after Things’ opening, Nathalie — already frayed by the demands of looking after her elderly mother (Edith Scob) — finds out Heinz is […]
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