Graduation
-
Schrader’s Mishima, Cristian Mungiu on Criterion and Dear White People: Jim Hemphill’s Weekend Viewing Recommendations
In a nice bit of cinematic serendipity, Paul Schrader’s singular 1985 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters arrives on Blu-ray from Criterion at the same moment that his latest movie, First Reformed, is enjoying a deservedly successful art house run. Mishima remains perhaps Schrader’s most original and idiosyncratic film, which is really saying something; a meditation on the life and writings of Japanese author Yukio Mishima, it’s neither a conventional bio-pic nor a straightforward literary adaptation, though it combines elements of both forms. Schrader, writing in collaboration with his brother Leonard (Kiss of the Spider Woman) and sister-in-law Chieko, […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 25, 2018 -
Helicopter Parent: Cristian Mungiu on Graduation
Cristian Mungiu’s feature debut, 2002’s Occident, was an accomplished exercise in the then-fashionable mode of multiple narratives, which slowly overlap and converge, but it wasn’t until 2007’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days that he received significant international attention. Building on the style established by his contemporary, Cristi Puiu, in 2005’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (as well as using Puiu’s DP Oleg Mutu), Mungiu crafted an intense portrait of a woman trying to get a proscribed abortion in the waning days of Ceaușescu’s Romania. The film won the Palme d’Or, solidifying the rise of the Romanian New Wave. […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 13, 2017 -
TIFF Critic’s Notebook 3: Hermia & Helena, The Dreamed Ones, Graduation
Matías Piñeiro has been living in NYC for a few years now, so it’s logical he’d eventually make a film set at least partially there. I can’t pretend to a lack of rooting interest: I know, casually or closely, a semi-significant number of people who worked on or acted in this, did a set report (meaning I spent part of the first viewing waiting to see what was actually being said in the shot I saw filmed) and, if you go to a lot of rep cinema in the city, Piñeiro — a serious, inveterate cinephile — is just kind of generally around. Hermia […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 10, 2016
