A limited survey in haiku form.
Hungary 1942: Men on the Mountain
Director: István Szots
Dramatizing land
enclosure in Hungary.
God will not save us.
Hungary 1979: Angi Vera
Director: Pál Gábor
Every poor soul
has a birthday. Even the
soul-less party hack.
Czechifornia* 1981: Cutter's Way
Director: Ivan Passer
One eye, one arm and
on one leg John Heard bounces.
Jeff Bridges' bare chest.
Romania 2007: 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
Director: Cristian Mungiu
How projected light
sucks the air out of a room.
Relentless tension.
Czech Republic 2007: Small Russian Clouds of Smoke and Low-Level Flight [Vols. 3 & 4 of the Private Century series]
Director: Jan Šikl
Russian exiles live
in Czechoslovakia
and film each other.
**********
*California, as seen by a Czech emigre director.
4 comments:
After I read the first one, I did hope for a second that in a brilliant conceptual move, they would *all* end with "God will not save us," but I do think the ones you got are quite wonderful. Do you think a book of movie review haikus could count as a publication for tenure purposes? I sure hope so.
I did hope for a second that in a brilliant conceptual move, they would *all* end with "God will not save us."
And, with these movies, it would have been all too appropriate. I'll leave it to the reader to make the necessary changes in her/his mind.
I thought Vera--and her older woman comrade--were more than soulless hacks; my take on the movie is that it illustrates how a rebel gets turned into a soulless hack, with her eyes wide open. Email me more than 17 syllables, I want to discuss this further.
hooray for the return of the Buster Haiku!
Post a Comment