Author: Peter Schilling

“L’Atalante”, 1934. Directed by Jean Vigo; written by Jean Guinee, Albert Riera, and Vigo. Starring the incredible Michel Simon, Dita Parlo and Jean Daste.

Now showing in the lecture room at the Walker Art Center, running continuously as the museum is open, every ninety minutes.

I wish I had nothing better to do with my life that haunt the Walker Art Center this month, to lead unsuspecting patrons past Kiki Smith, up from their overpriced desserts, away from the sculpture garden and into the darkened lecture room. There, a special surprise awaits them, every ninety minutes: L’Atalante is playing, a sexy fairytale on a riverbarge, a film to mesmerize children and adults from three to ninety-three.

L’Atalante is the simple story of a barge captain who marries a beautiful young woman from a small village, and brings her upon his cat-crazy ship. The two are blissfully in love, and the movie runs along with the two lovers intent on discovering the tasty little secrets of a new marriage on this slow moving barge down the Seine. The crew of the ship includes a boy who appears touched in the head and, most amazingly, Michel Simon. He is a towering fellow with a tattooed chest that can be made to sing, the severed hands of his lover on a shelf, his room overrun with the detritus of a life at sea.

Eventually, the girl tires of the life of a barge, and is lured into Paris by a tricky saloon magician. The husband nearly goes mad, at one point jumping into the Seine only to see images of his wife swimming before him. For her part, Paris is a nightmare of whores, pickpockets, and cruelty. At one point, the lovers dream of being in each other’s arms in a scene so erotic, and yet so innocent, it puts David Lynch to shame.

When watching L’Atalante, you might find yourself gaping at Monsieur Simon, quite possibly the most arresting creature ever to grace the silver screen. Simon is as much a work of art as anything you’ll find in the museum. He was a boxer, and had the look of a well-worn pugilist: a thick slab of a chest, a face that looked as if it had kneaded by many a glove. Simon most famously was the lead in Renoir’s Boudou Sauve des Eaux, which was later remade as Down and Out in Beverly Hills. In L’Atalante, Simon’s character is, as David Thomson writes in his Biographical Dictionary of Film (a wonderful book by the way), a “sprawling, unclean satyr, pointing to the special mingling of self and character that is so necessary (and dangerous) in screen acting” and specifically in L’Atalante “a river creature, too rank, overwhelmingly private, and innately alien for polite society.”

As much as I enjoy the Walker, a ninety minute boat ride with Michel Simon would be quite a tonic for that polite society.

The director, Jean Vigo, is an interesting study as well. The son of an anarchist who was murdered in prison, Vigo was raised partially in a dark attic with literally dozens of cats, which make their presence known in this film, at times being hurled upon the actors. Vigo made only four films, dying shortly after L’Atalante was in the can, of tuberculosis.

How does one recommend leaving these beautiful April afternoons for a darkened room in a museum? How can I possibly suggest ignoring, even for ninety minutes, Kiki Smith’s striking sculptures, which you could spend a week trying to wrap your brain around? I don’t quite know, except to say that I personally can’t imagine a better day than one that might include the spray from the giant cherry in the garden, Smith’s Chernobyl crows, and the gyrating tattoos of Michel Simon.

L’Enfant and Friends With Money

“L’Enfant”, 2006. Written and directed by Jena-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Starring Jeremie Renier, Deborah Francois, and Jeremie Segard.

Now showing at the Edina Theater.

If you’ve ever lived in Michigan, specifically Detroit or one of the constellation of broken-down factory towns on the eastern side of the state (Flint, Saginaw, Bay City), you’ll probably have a special feeling for L’Enfant. The people that have to survive in these towns–and burgs like them everywhere in the world– have found their champion in the Dardenne Brothers.

There’s one scene in the Dardenne’s L’Enfant that really sticks with me: of Bruno (played with verve by Jeremie Renier) wandering down broken sidewalks beside a busy street, shoving his pram along, going nowhere. There is no score in this gutsy little film, just the soundtrack of poverty, where we hear what people too poor to get an iPod or a television have to listen to: trains and cars, shouting, the hydraulic grind of buses when you have the change to ride, and the slamming doors of homeless shelters. These are noises I’m somewhat familiar with, and I have to say that there’s a certain beauty in the way they’re rendered here. Life just happens in L’Enfant, without dressing, without pomp. With its verite camera style, the thoroughly unglamorous look to the actors (Renier appears as if he hasn’t washed his face in weeks), and the only light seemingly filtered through relentless clouds, L’Enfant is refreshingly real and honest. It is to the Dardennes credit that they refuse to beat any manifesto into your head, allowing their simple story to affect you.

L’Enfant opens with Sonia, a girl of eighteen, clutching a six-day old baby, Jimmy. Coming home from the hospital, she discovers that Bruno, who is also the father of the child, has sublet her apartment to a pair of lowlifes who won’t let her in. The opening minutes of the film show her wandering through the foul Belgian coal town of Seraing looking for Bruno. In doing so, she no doubt gives concerned mothers in the audience a coronary by being driven around on a scooter, clutching the baby while the vehicle swerves through traffic.

Sonia finds Bruno living under a bridge, chides him for leaving them without a place to sleep, and then shows off Jimmy for approval. Bruno’s jacket is dirty, his face peppered with acne, and Sonia beams despite a future about as bright as the gray skies and polluted river that wanders by like a freight train. These kids are playful, horny, ignoring their fate but full of energy, as if sleeping under an bridge and having a child was the coolest thing in the world.

L’Enfant isn’t brutal–there’s no indication that the Dardennes are trying to slap you in the face with the hardship. Instead, we get the simple details: the walking by the busy street, swaying on a bus, making a cup of instant coffee and the endless search for a match to light the last bent cigarette. In fact, for the most part, these two seem quite content with their lot in life, which involves petty theft, waiting for unemployment, sleeping in homeless shelters, and then tossing whatever money they glom away as soon as they get it. They’re so broke Bruno, at one point, has to sell that damned hat. Invisible forces push and pull them in every direction–Bruno gets a call to come to this seedy bar or that sewage pipe, to check stolen merchandise or fence it. He is scruffy and infinitely stupid–I would contend that he is the child of the title–but has a swagger of youth about him, and we can see why a young girl like Sonia, herself no genius, would be charmed.

The plot is itself a fascinating little machine, subtle and fraught with tension as any action film. The Dardenne’s spent a great deal of their career making documentaries that focused on the underclass and the aforementioned verite style–handheld cameras, following their actors around seemingly without direction, no musical score–makes this fictional piece alarmingly realistic. But somewhere along the line they became master screenwriters–L’Enfant should be heavy-handed, should be as dry as a documentary, but it moves as swiftly as the best film noir, without any of the window dressing. Plot twists pop up when least expected, usually coming in through Bruno’s cell phone. A casual hint from a fence gives Bruno the bright idea of selling the baby without grasping any of the implications. While Sonia waits in line for her welfare check, Bruno takes the baby for a walk.

The scenes of him moving aimlessly to the dropoff point, his face registering the anxiety and confusion of a daft hoodlum, are riveting. Finally, Bruno steals into an abandoned apartment, removes his jacket, and tenderly lays the baby down. Then he retreats to another empty room, its shades bent and plaster cracked and peeling. Bruno waits, pacing, hearing the sound of people opening doors, closing doors, walking away, all the while staring at his cell phone, waiting for it to tell him what to do. There is no music, no swelling violin or solo piano piece telling us to be afraid or melancholy. When he gets the call, his jacket is full of cash, and Jimmy is gone. And we are devastated.

Bruno can’t seem to understand what’s wrong about selling the baby. After all, he reasons, it would be easy enough to produce another, and besides, as his cell phone again informs him, the baby will be going to someone with real money in their life. Sonia, after finally catching up with Bruno, collapses at the news. Bruno takes her to the hospital, and she tells the police what’s happened. Soon he is being questioned by the cops, manhandled by the thugs who sold his baby (which Bruno managed to buy back), and, in trying to get back some of the money he now owes, ends up being chased by vigilantes and nearly killing his young accomplice during a purse-snatching. And yet Bruno flits through his life without malice, and his redemption, though small, is a difficult scene to watch. But I could watch it again. A dozen times.

L’Enfant is not without its faults. For a movie so embedded in reality, the baby is merely a prop. The Dardennes, in an interview in this month’s Sight and Sound, admitted that the baby had to remain an object, which I think slightly undermines some of the realism–we eventually notice that at no point in the movie does the child cry, or the characters react to a full diaper, or even scramble to feed the thing. And I was dying to understand Sonia as more than just a mother. The brothers supposedly came up with the idea for the film after seeing a poor young woman pushing a pram through the city and wondered where the father was. He’s here, in abundance, but the mother is given virtually no definition. But then, this is Bruno’s story, a story of a minor redemption, of how guilt eventually asserts its place in his soul, and makes him a wiser human being. But still without options.

L’Enfant didn’t just thrust me into a pleasant melancholy but it also depressed me, because I wish–oh, how I wish–that we had the Dardenne brothers for Michigan, for Newark, for Gary, capturing the struggles of impoverished youth here. Paying careful attention to every detail of the life of our poor, or the kids begging for change in front of Calhoun Square, or the bums sleeping by the abandoned Tiger Stadium. Of course, there’s not a director here who would dare tackle such subjects with such humility. Any film in the American ghetto has to have a soundtrack to make the proper dough, filled with stars parading about for their Oscars, and with hamhanded plots. Belgium, then, is fortunate: L’Enfant captures beautifully the struggles of the truly poor and truly uneducated, the people for whom life holds such little promise but in the Dardenne’s eyes, also a little poetry.

“Friends With Money”, 2006. Written and directed by Nicole Hofsteder. Starring Jennifer Aniston, Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener, Joan Cusack, Scott Caan, Greg Germann, Jason Isaacs, Bob Stephenson, Ty Burrell and Roman Polanski look-alike Simon McBurney.

Now showing at the Uptown Theater.

First of all, this review is going to have some plot spoilers in it. Secondly, I’m going to tell you straight away that I hated this movie. Thoroughly, and with a passion that rivals my wife’s loathing of Rachel Ray (“fuck her thirty minute meals!”). I’ll admit that Friends With Money inflamed my own sense of class prejudice, and seems especially trite in light of having recently seen L’Enfant. Perhaps this is an unfair comparison, like suggesting that The 40-Year-Old Virgin has no merit when you’ve just sat through, say, Shoah. And yet, I found myself consistently frustrated by Friends With Money, in the end feeling that I just wasted two hours of my life with a group of foolish people I would never spend ten minutes with in real life. The characters are lack insight, have crises that seem to be made for a weekly television show and are spoiled rich–even Jennifer Aniston’s poor girl, who is as ridiculous a caricature of a lower-class person I’ve ever seen. Frankly, I don’t have a clue why anyone would watch this movie. To be blunt: Friends with Money is the most hateful, uninspired, and shallow film I’ve seen in ages. It is a study of assholes and infuriating.

Friends With Money is ostensibly the tale of a poor woman named Olivia (Aniston) who works as a maid while her other pals, the friends with money, fight their existential struggles. The details are as empty as you would see on TV: we know that Aniston is poor because she has to scam Lancome samples and can’t afford to buy the $70 dollar bottles (the price is mentioned in the film–a fine use of research). She has no problem dining out in the fancy restaurants of her friends, doesn’t have to take the bus, or even live in a dingy apartment. She smokes pot, which helps us understand that she’s aimless. Olivia was also once a teacher at a private school, but quit because the kids made fun of her cheap car. How she survived her student teaching, I’ll never know.

Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand and Joan Cusack, three of my favorite actresses, are the friends, and are given nothing to work with. Keener is a screenwriter who apparently has been arguing with her husband since their wedding day, and yet collaborates with him daily. He is a jerk, ignoring her needs, making mean comments about her ass, and obviously cares little for their child, who, like all the kids in this movie, is nothing more than a moppet on which plot turns can hinge. Keener and the jerk are in the midst of building an addition to their house that ruins their relationship with their neighbors, and pushes their own marriage to ruin. McDormand is afraid of getting old, of losing the spark in life, and is growing more and more bitter, and taking to insulting acquaintances and strangers in public. She has a fine relationship with her husband, a polite, well-dressed fellow whom everyone believes is gay–a joke so startlingly original I’m shocked to the core that it hasn’t been used in other movies or television shows. McDormand’s tale is resolved as if this were a sitcom that needed its ending shoehorned in before advertisements (it also relates to McDormand washing her hair). Joan Cusack, one of the most gifted comic actors in movies today, is utterly wasted, a happy at-home mom who just plays with her kids and allows the Hispanic nanny (yet another truly poor character tossed under the rug) to do the hard work. She seems not to have too much to do other than donate her two million dollars (that’s right) to her kids’ school–what else is she going to do with it? Hell if I or anyone else knows; I’m sure financial planners and family members have no ideas whatsoever.

All the while there’s bickering and fighting, four actresses chewing their scenes in the hopes of a future Oscar nominations, divorces and stale jokes that sound as if they were picked up off Nora Ephrom’s cutting room floor. Friends has not a whit of understanding, and is insulting to anyone who’s ever cleaned a house for a living.

There may be some truths in this film, reflections of shallow people in their shallow worlds, but the point was lost to me. No one learns anything in this film, and Aniston, lucky girl, gets to finally fall in love with a fat man who shares her love of pot, a belief that fundraisers are silly, and who is unbelievably wealthy. She will get to spend her days picking out curtains for him and this is, apparently, good. Between her and Cusack’s stay-at-home mom, they are the only two women who have found happiness. The women who express themselves and work hard at what they do–as a screenwriter and fashion designer–are devoutly unhappy.

Jennifer Aniston might end up a decent actress someday, if she can get it out of her mind to star in films like this one and The Good Girl. In the same way that it’s ludicrous for Tom Cruise to parade about as a grease-monkey in War of the Worlds, so it is that Aniston looks ridiculous pretending that she’s the one of all her friends who is flabby and out of shape. Since she’s apparently unwilling to soften that rock-hard body of hers for roles like these, or bring any insight to them, she’s doomed.

Friends With Money has been receiving decent reviews, and maybe it’s worth watching: perhaps my own background keeps me from appreciating a movie about people who are too daft to notice that they’re nothing more than materialistic bastards. The director, Nicole Holofcener, has worked in television, and seems to have hauled the worst of its mechanics onto the silver screen. To make matters worse, this film, considered to be ‘art-house’, uses up space that the Landmark Theaters could seemingly dedicate to foreign films (dozens of which will be shown soon at the Mpls/St. Paul Film Festival). L’Enfant is being shuffled off to the Edina this weekend, while Friends gets to use up the large tracts of Uptown’s squeaky seats.

When I arrived at the Varsity Theater for last night’s “Don’t Monkey with the Oak Street” meeting, it was a balmy night, ripe for an outdoor game of baseball, an ice cream cone, or an assault on my neglected lawn. As I crossed 4th street I thought, God knows why I go to these things, to hope and worry and spend another night tossing and turning and praying that things work out. But I do–go to these things that is–and I did. And, when it comes down to it, I knew I had to be there if I wanted my favorite haunt to survive.

The Oak Street Cinema is closed for now. According to volunteer Barry Kryshka, who has worked with the cinema for over eleven years and had been there until just recently, the theater manager had quit, as had a pair of projectionists. “Who knows who’s left,” he wondered, and I wondered, too. The Oak Street has not had an extended calendar in weeks, and has eschewed its old menu of classics for second run films like Crash and Match Point. In the right hands, the Oak Street wouldn’t lack for help–last night’s show packed the Varsity, with literally hundreds of concerned moviegoers milling about, signing pledges for money, quaffing Guinness and feasting on the free artichoke dip and baguette slices. There was the old crowd in the center of the room, the regulars I see at every show, replete with their old Oak Street shirts wrinkled beneath a pair of suspenders, each guy with a briefcase and some film bio, trying to shout the others down about which movie still was being projected on the screen up front. Barry had spent a good deal of time on the internet, gathering shots from movies that had played at the Oak Street, from Gun Crazy to The Godfather, Paths of Glory to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and “that still from some Kong film from Japan–Baby Kong, Son of Kong, I don’t remember. Look at him tearing into that toy boat! It never showed, but it was too cool to ignore.” Barry’s favorite movie at the Oak Street: “The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three. I love New York City cop dramas.”

I settled down with my beer and watched and listened: unlike the last meeting, back in January, this one seemed infinitely more hopeful. At the former meeting, the whole desperate situation took members by surprise, and no one knew what to say except to shout their displeasure. Last night there was an actual proposal to read, the situation was well organized with a table of information, eats, etc. People were nervous but chatty, hoping for the best.

The proposal, simply put, states that the Oak Street’s mission is to “keep the history of cinema alive by projecting films in a theatrical context, and to help educate new generations to the value of classic cinema experienced communally in a neighborhood movie theater”. It voices everyone’s concern over the fact that this mission is being ignored, at the lack of repertory films, and the suggestion that the theater’s being shown to developers (though I’ve heard from a board member that this was done to secure a loan). The gist of the situation: let Bob Cowgill run the thing, with his own money if need be, until the place gets back on its feet.

In my mind, this isn’t such a bad idea. The board has been silent on what they plan to do with the place, leaving that January meeting as the last piece of real dialogue. When Cowgill retired from the Oak Street awhile back, he had bought the building, whittled its mortgage down to next to nothing, and left over two hundred grand in the bank. He’s definitely got a track record of success. That, coupled with the board’s nearly six months of near silence (Hook was fired in October, and for most of us the news of the debt wasn’t understood until January, and now, in April, there’s still no plan). If the board is so interested in the upcoming film festival–which is not an ignoble concern–why not give the Oak Street back to the people who made it the finest repertory theater in the Midwest?

At 7:45, Bob climbed onstage, did a little hop by way of acknowledging the applause, and stated, briefly, this proposal. He then offered to give the mike over to anyone else following the movie, An Eastern Westerner, a Harold Lloyd short with accompaniment from the fabulous Rich Dworsky. At this, Al Milgrom, standing in the back, barked something and vanished.

In spite of being just over twenty minutes, the movie seemed to take forever. It was funny, the music was great, but you can’t concentrate on your funny bone with so much tension in the room. There’s not much story in An Eastern Westerner, just Harold Lloyd getting shipped west by his family, to a town that’s run by a bully and his Klansmen pals. Hijinks ensue when Lloyd tries to save a young woman from the masher. And then it was over.

Bob climbed back up the podium, acknowledged Mr. Dworsky’s piano playing and asked if there was anyone who wanted to come forward. Al? Al Milgrom? Nothing. After a spell, however, board president Stephen Zuckerman walked slowly through the gauntlet and made his way onstage, alone, to face the music. Dressed in a wrinkled blue shirt and orange shorts, he looked more like he was ready for a backyard barbecue than shout-down. Stephen tried to bat off concerns and put a good face on things. As usual there was a crackpot: one guy who went on and on about the fact that he went recently to see a movie at the Bell and it wasn’t showing even though he’d looked it up online and in the paper but they were having some “Dead Poets Society” (his words, baffling to us all) and who is running the website anyway? I felt for Stephen–he also had to contend with a couple of loudmouths who wouldn’t take their turn at the mike, questions from a friendly guy carrying a baby, Bob yelling “give me a chance!”, and then, from volunteer Ian Whitney, this startling news: apparently Ian waited in front of the Oak Street to direct people confused over the venue, when someone rode up on a bike and told Ian that he was “defacing my theater” and called the cops. There was speculation that this was a board member, someone who considered the Oak Street “his”. The cops just drove up, slowed down, and kept going.

Everyone who took the mike acknowledged that Stephen was brave to come there and take this abuse, and then proceeded to abuse him. Because they’re aching just like I was, wondering what the hell was going on and why we had come to this point.

Above all, it should have been clear to everyone that we weren’t going to get any solid answers from Stephen. He did his best, but eventually even his patience ran out, and finally said that this whole thing started when Bob quit, so it was really his fault as much as anyone’s. That was clearly the wrong thing to say, and Stephen was met with a volley of boos and shouts. Frustrated, he asked Bob, “How are you going to do it? You have a full time job! How are you going to run the Oak Street and still keep teaching?”

With that, Bob shrugged and said, “Magic. And a little song and dance.” And then proceeded to wow the audience with a Cole Porter tune with new lyrics he’d penned himself: Don’t Monkey with the Oak Street! He and Stephen even did a two-step while we sang out the chorus.

Afterward, everyone mingled, trying their level best to elbow in for a thank you or a longer conversation with Bob or Stephen. The regulars at the their table didn’t move, but spoke at length about this movie and that, chowing on dip and grumbling over Bob’s treatment at the hands of the board. Peter Wagenius, the mayor’s aide who tried to keep the last meeting in order, was there, walking around with a concerned look on his face. I noticed a couple of film critics from other papers, and a good two dozen former volunteers, a wonderful community, hugging one another and gesticulating, each one jazzed at the success of the evening. I spoke with the some of these volunteers, who gave me their take of the Oak Street’s downfall, of former director Jamie Hook’s short tenure, the board’s silence, of what they would do, and will do, should this next attempt succeed or fail. They were full of hope, and that gave me some hope. And, like Barry, they shared their favorite Oak Street movie memories: Ian’s, for instance, was Two Lane Blacktop.

It took me awhile to get through the crowd to Stephen, but when I did he was in great spirits for a guy who’d been soundly booed, shouted at, and poked with sticky questions. He wouldn’t commit to admitting to any plan to help the Oak Street, except that they would get on it as soon as the festival was over. He shrugged when asked if repertory cinema is feasible nowadays. But his favorite movie at the Oak Street was the most recent: Finding Shawn, because, man, “I lived right there, on Haight and Ashbury back then, and that movie brought it all back.” Then, with a touch of wistfulness, he added, “You know, if people want to back rep, we won’t say no. We’re willing to be proven wrong.”

I spoke with Bob last, as the place was emptying out and we couldn’t even buy a beer anymore (though it was only 9:30). Bob was thrilled and frustrated and as riled up as anyone. As we spoke, it was announced that there were already over $37,000 in pledges, a roaring success, and we both smiled. Bob laid out his frustrations with the board, with watching the theater he’d helped build go from being fully solvent to seriously in debt. “When I retired from the Oak Street, I was told to leave the new director alone, to let him do his thing. Maybe that was a mistake. Because frankly, I was surprised he wasn’t fired sooner, when they discovered he’d missed the grants.” An additional shock was that last year’s festival went off well in spite of this, or so he thought. Then word got out that the MFA lost money on the festival, Hook was fired, and the Oak Street was in serious trouble. In December, Bob met with two members of the board, Tim Grady and Susan Smoluchowski, and he told them that they owed him a chance to save the theater. Bob even offered to put up his own money to ease the debt, and have a series of fundraisers. “I was told that it was ‘too little too late.’ It was even suggested that I was delusional about the mission [to show repertory films]”. But then there seemed to be a change of heart, and there was talk of Bob’s coming on board. That came and went, time passed, and they stopped talking to him. While we spoke, Bob fidgeted and blinked, spoke with tremendous pride at his accomplishments, with righteous anger at the current failures, and, at times, spoke quietly, wondering how much of this was his fault. He included a number of regrets, things he felt he could have done to make the Oak Street more solvent today. And he finally answered Stephen’s primary concern, as to whether or not Bob could fully commit himself. Bob was teaching, full time, when he started Oak Street. “I’d make the time now, as I did then.”

Throughout the night, I’d asked various volunteers if they’d consider starting over in a new location if their recent attempt failed. A number of them said definitely, and one went so far as to suggest a few new venues. But at this question, Bob sighed heavily and hung his head. “I don’t know. For me, it’s the Oak Street–that place felt right. When we opened it, I knew we had something special.” And he was worried that the perception was that things would be easy if he were back in charge. “I don’t want anyone to think it’s easy. We had volunteers at the start, paid people next to nothing, and you had to keep it in line financially. It was hard. Very hard. And it’s become more and more expensive to do this kind of thing. Probably we would need to go back to that volunteer energy. Perhaps that’s what kept it so great in the first place.”

“The board is scared, scared of debt and scared of repertory cinema,” he continued. “They’re tired. Really, the only misfeasance on the board’s part is in not trusting me. You need to utilize what people have to offer you when you’re in trouble. I have the energy, the resources, and the smarts to get this thing off the ground.” If he were allowed to take over for the time being, Bob promised that he would utilize every angle to raise money, from pledges to approaching the funding community again to a series of fundraisers, perhaps bringing to town many of the directors who have appeared at the theater in the past. “If we did all that, using my time and even my money, and we failed, I would join the board in saying repertory theater isn’t possible. But I firmly believe that if New York or Pittsburgh or Los Angeles can have these types of theaters, then Minnesota can too. I just want to be given the chance.”

Bob fell into a profound silence after that. “This night was a tremendous success. Now I have to figure out where to go from here.” When I asked him about his favorite film that played at the Oak Street, it was as if new life ran through him. We were standing, and he flailed his arms and raised his voice like he was preaching on a streetcorner. “I remember one night, it was February and freezing, a Tuesday I want to say, and we were showing Bergman’s Summer Interlude, and we had maybe a dozen, two dozen people in the audience. But I thought, here we are in Minneapolis and these people fought the cold to see this wonderful film.” He beamed. “There were many nights like that.”

By now the Varsity was empty, except for all the volunteers loafing in their Oak Street King Kong shirts, looking amazed at the success of the evening. They’re a good group of people. I don’t believe that anyone’s out to destroy the Oak Street, and over the next few weeks I hope I can uncover more of this story–it would be helpful to hear the board’s point of view, and what Al Milgrom has to say. Throughout the night volunteers and concerned folks often slipped into theories as to why the board is acting the way they did, from being focused solely on the festival and Bell programming, to being inept, to hungering for the land the theater sits on. Not having spoken to anyone at length but Stephen, I can’t say whether any of that’s true or not–except to point out that the board’s silence can do nothing but provoke these notions.

As I walked back to my car the night was still clear and balmy. I was a mess of contradictions, feeling furious at the people who drove the cinema into debt and frustrated that there has been such poor communication, but pleased to see so many like-minded people at both meetings, giving me a glimmer of hope. That night I remembered my first experience at the Oak Street, seeing Pickup on South Street in July or August years ago. I had called the theater to make sure it was playing and get directions–this was before Moviefone or the internet–and the guy on the line said, “Our air conditioner’s broken, so it’s hot. But we’ve got free pop!” So we went, Janice and I, to sip our lukewarm Cokes and watch a great movie that takes place in a broiling New York City while we broiled ourselves. Last night I drove by a shuttered Oak Street on my way home and I thought to myself: we’re not asking for a few hundred million from the state and a retractable roof, nor are we hoping for a constitutional amendment to fix what our prejudices tell us is wrong, no, we’re just asking one group of concerned people to give the theater to another group of concerned people who’ll do their absolute best to keep it going. It’s deeply frustrating that it should be so hard, but I know from past experience that saving these kind of things always is. And then I remembered all those movies I’d seen, Nashville and Little Otik and Singin’ in the Rain and every other wonderful picture at the Oak Street, and that after each show I was always thankful, knowing that the good things rarely last, but wishing they could go on forever.

Tonight, at 7:30 in the pm at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown, the founders of the original Oak Street are gathering, along with concerned patrons (that would be you and I), to try and save the old gal.

I’m hoping for the best but steeling myself for the worst. No doubt this meeting is being held because the Board of the Minnesota Film Arts has not been forthcoming with their plans to save the thing. I’ve emailed a few of them myself, and their response has been that they’re busy trying to get the Mpls-St.Paul Film Festival off the ground, which might be a good excuse. I have a boatload of questions for both parties and I’m hoping to get some answers tonight. Undoubtedly, I won’t get all of them.

One question I have is this: if the board fails to respond, would we be willing to start over, in some new location (like the Varsity or the Suburban World? Or the Hollywood Theater?). In my mind, this isn’t about the building, it’s about seeing films like Little Otik, Pickup on South Street, and The Godfather, with the latter’s maniacal fans ignoring their vacations so they could watch their favorite on the big screen. The Oak Street Cinema is one of my favorite places on earth, because of seeing movies like these with crowds of like-minded individuals. The building is only a part of the pleasure, and the smallest part to me: saving the Oak Street doesn’t mean showing Crash and Match Point just to plug some financial holes. This place means something because of what they bring, and the possibility that someday your favorite classics will land there. Like Winchester ’73 or the new films of the Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer. Or simply Singin’ in the Rain.

I wrote this when I last heard the Oak Street was closing: …I’m tired of the good things coming to a close. I’m tired of seeing beautiful theaters sit empty, tired of watching DVDs by myself, tired of seeing the good and small things in life succumb to the mechanical beasts that care only for our money, and never for our souls. If you’re tired of all this, stop by and watch one or both of these wonderful movies. Then, whether or not they blossom or fade away, thank whatever it is you thank for the gift of the Oak Street Cinema.

I’m hoping this meeting will be a new beginning and not a final farewell.

Last time it was Citizen Kane and Casablanca. Tonight we’re being treated to some wonderful Harold Lloyd shorts tonight with live accompaniment accompanied by Prairie Home Companion pianist Rich Dworski. And because it’s the Varsity, there’ll be a full bar, so that we can enjoy, as Vincent Vega says, “a glass of beer!” with our flick.

THE NOIR SMOOTHIE

“Brick”, 2006. Written and directed by Rian Johnson (and with a cool website that features a glossary). Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Matt O’Leary, Nora Zehetner, Lukas Haas, Noah Fleiss, Noah Segan, Emilie de Ravin, Meagan Good, and Richard Roundtree.

First of all, I have to admit that I’m a sucker for any screenplay whose characters use words like “yegg” and “shamus” in conversation. And let me also state for the record that I would have loved, adored, admired, worshipped, forced all my friends to see, and memorized every line of dialogue in Brick when I was in high school. Now older, I can still admire this film even though its lack of heart bugs me. That said, Brick is a brilliantly shot, sharply written, well acted, ultimately soulless, and thoroughly entertaining film. And if there’s not enough quotes to be had from that paragraph, you publicists aren’t doing their job.

Brick is film noir. Noir, in case you didn’t know it, is the perfect balm for hateful teens. Brick does these poor souls a great service in taking this wonderful movie tradition and fusing it perfectly into a high school environment. In fact, this is a world so controlled by teens that they can blast gunshots in broad daylight, get knifed in school corridors, beat the tar out of one another in mall and school parking lots, and hide bodies in broad daylight without the intervention of the bulls–which means cops–or teachers or parents. In fact, such is the triumph of teenage life that whole gangs of violent, color-coded teens, in for a ‘sit-down’ can be served country-style apple juice by ignorant moms. I can already hear the squares mounting the challenge that there are virtually no adults in this world, that the folks are impotent, that these kids drink and take drugs freely, and what a lousy influence this is. Well, the squares can go fuck themselves. Back in my day we had to waste our time with John Hughes’ yearly offering (like Breakfast Club)–today’s kids are much better served with Brick’s nod to Hammett, Chandler, and all its thievery from Miller’s Crossing. They are especially well treated by a film so rich in dialogue–man, I would have memorized half this film and been muttering “he knows every two-bit reef-worm in the burg and where they eat their lunch”, and bugging the hell out of all my friends and teachers.

The story is as convoluted as anything Raymond Chandler ever scribbled, full of twists and turns and even dead bodies and kids in comas. It opens, for Christ’s sake, with our hero, Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), staring at the body of his former girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin) laying face down in a ditch, and plays in flashback for a little while. Fortunately, Brick isn’t interested in the silly games of Memento–it’s a labyrinth designed to build an atmosphere for our players to strut their stuff, not for the director to pull the rug from under you. Brendan, a thin, bespectacled loner is reminiscent of Tom Regan from the aforementioned Miller’s Crossing (a great, great movie, by the way). Like Tom, he gets by on his wits and has the living shit beat out of him every fifteen minutes or so. After the fast-forward of Emily’s death, Brendan receives a mysterious note asking him to stand at a streetcorner one afternoon. The payphone rings, he answers it. Emily is calling about the brick. It’s a problem, she fucked up, she’s got to go, hangs up. And disappears for awhile. Of course, we know she’s dead, or will die eventually, and we’ll soon learn what the brick is (though my first thought, that it’s a brick of drugs, proved correct). Throughout, not only does Brendad use these hardboiled terms–‘yegg’, ‘bull’, ‘shamus’–but he’s fed a diet of new terms that he, and the audience, have to eventually figure out, like ‘pin’ and ‘brick’ and ‘tug’. On top of that Brendan has to first find her and then, after she’s croaked, get to the bottom of her murder. In the process, he works for both a drug dealer named The Pin (Lukas Haas) and his rebellious muscle Tugger (Noah Fleiss) and plays them against one another. He also pushes around stoner Dode (Noah Segen) who will eventually throw a bong into the works and gum things up. And, again, if you’ve seen Miller’s Crossing you might notice that these three characters so resemble Caspar, the Dane and Brenie Bernbaum it’s scary. Of course, the Coen’s movie was itself a mishmash of Hammett’s Glass Key and Red Harvest. No matter. In my mind, these are the kind of influences that might just pry the kids away from “Grand Theft Auto” and eventually stick their noses into some musty Jim Thompson novels or Howard Hawks movies.

Jesus, I wish Brick had been released twenty years ago. There’s a lot for teenagers to learn here: how could I have known that the key to fighting is an ability to get pummeled and kick people’s shins? Oh, yes, and to throw your whole flimsy body into every punch. Even more alluring, the film makes high school seem like a hotbed of sex and intrigue. Brick is peopled with the likes of elfin Lukas Haas, wearing a black cape, carrying a raven’s head cane and eating oatmeal cookies with his mom; Noah Fleiss as the muscle-bound dope who eventually warms up to our hero; sexy Megan Good as a teenage drama-queen chanteuse; and, of course, you’ve got your mysterious woman, Nora Zehetner. And the nerdy Brendan gets to flit in and out of every scene? And hit on by on the gorgeous young women? Did I mention I would have seen this thing twenty times when I was fifteen?

Brick is not without its faults: making Brendan heartsick and possibly the father of the murdered girl’s child is a silly and emotionally hollow sidetrack. The film also takes place in what must be the only California (or U.S.) high school without a single Asian or Hispanic student.

But Brick is an impressive first film, just the kind of movie that brings some excitement to a jaded movie critic and surly youth looking to find something to ignite their dreary evenings. With a dynamite soundtrack (with cow bells and wind chimes), gorgeous cinematography, and a Byzantine plot, Brick’s going to become the focus of some lonely teen’s healthy obsession.

MR. WENDERS, AMERICA NEEDS YOUR CAMERA

“Don’t Come Knocking”, 2006. Directed by Wim Wenders, Screenplay by Sam Shepard (from hundreds of late-night stories betwixt Wenders and Shepard). Starring Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth, Gabriel Mann, Sarah Polley, Fairuza Balk, Eva Marie Saint, George Kennedy, James Gammon, and way down the credits list (“Garbageman”) a fellow with the fantastic name of Rockey Whipkey.

So in the last four years, Wim Wenders and Sam Shepard would get together here in Minnesota to write Don’t Come Knocking. They’d walk across the frozen St. Croix river, snowshoeing across snow-crusted plains, to a little cabin that needed firewood to heat itself. One night, after tossing some old wood in the chimney (as Wim put it), the place suddenly filled with ladybugs, probably hiding out in the bark. Wim loves ladybugs. So he collected them, gathered some up, gingerly placed them outside. Then Sam comes in and flips out. “Those aren’t ladybugs!” he barks. “They’re Japanese beetles and they bite!” Slapping the bugs off themselves, Wim and Sam chased around clouds of Japanese beetles with an old-fashioned vacuum cleaner, sucking the bastards right up.

“I always thought there was a place for that story in Don’t Come Knocking,” Wim said, with a laugh.

Well, I don’t know why it failed to make the cut, because God damn if every other story’s isn’t in there.

Don’t Come Knocking is a great big mess. It is a spew of conflicting stories with a wonderful atmosphere, shot through with amazing color and an eye for people, frustrating and unevenly acted. Perhaps if I were under the influence of some recreational drug the movie might come across as a masterpiece. Sober and alert it is disappointing but still one of my favorite movies of this young season.

As I mentioned, Wim said it took four long years to make Don’t Come Knocking. Wim and Sam would gather together sporadically, scratching out a story and a screenplay, but mostly trying to come up with someone who would throw together enough money to make the thing. Personally, I think this is in insane. Wenders is no Orson Welles, hiding away to drink and eat up the profits (literally) and then fleeing to distant lands with cans of film under his hefty arms. No, Wenders delivers the goods, and on time, but the goods don’t make much money. True, sometimes his work is awful. But when Wim Wenders hits, his movies are sublime. For the most part, he hits in Don’t Come Knocking. And if some of the idiots in Hollywood ever got it through their thick heads to release his movies around the country, all at once like they do with shit like Failure to Launch, I think everyone would make some more money, and maybe he’d make more movies. Which is good for everyone.

The facts, which are like summarizing a drunken evening with a friend: Sam Shepard plays Howard, a down on his luck actor, once a big star whose career has cometed into the ground. He’s constantly inebriated, screws around, and one day hops on his horse and barrels away from the set of his latest movie and through the desert. Then, in a lovely scene, he trades his movie duds and fine horse to an old fart out in the desert. The old codger insists on keeping his beat up sweaty old hat–“You can’t have my hat!” he insists, and Howard agrees, walking away in his red socks.

Howard makes a beeline to his mother’s house, the mom played by Eva Marie Saint with her usual cool. While he’s hiding there, living in the basement and poring over his mother’s scrapbooks containing gossipy articles of his misdeeds (I don’t get that either), she informs Howard that a woman called years ago to say that he’s got a son (mom and son have been estranged for decades). So Howard borrows his mother’s old Packard automobile and drives to Butte, Montana to see Doreen (Jessica Lange) who he thinks is the mother of this child. There he meets the bipolar Earl (Gabriel Mann), his son, a young fellow who croons with a weirdo band and who hates Howard almost instantly. Also, Sky (Sarah Polley) is hiding out in the shadows, carrying her recently departed mother’s ashes around in a blue vase. She believes herself to be Howard’s daughter.

The whole time, Tim Roth is an insurance detective hired by the movie company to track Howard down to finish filming. Along the way, Howard wanders around Butte, Montana, which is the real star of this film. Butte’s a lonely, lovely town, a place that looks as if it stepped out of an Edward Hopper painting. And Wenders does his level best to make it look like a Hopper, with a rich palette of colors and sunlight and shadow. Butte, Wenders pointed out, was ripe for filmmaking: the last movie to be filmed there was a biography of native son Evel Knievel. And, noir fans, it was also the town that Hammett’s Red Harvest was supposedly based in (Wenders said that).

Don’t Come Knocking doesn’t seem to care about its plot, which is probably good, because it has more holes in it than my old cardigans after five years of abuse. Sam Shepard isn’t very convincing as a former movie star–the guy is, first and foremost, aging badly, looking very much like the old bastards that haunt cheap bars, clicking their dentures between sips of gin. And Jessica Lange, normally a genius, is given a role that doesn’t seem to suit the story–the rambling, enjoyable nature of the film is often undermined by her shrill explosions of emotion that come as a disconcerting shock. There are a million inconsistencies if you think too closely about the plot–why doesn’t anyone recognize this aging star with his picture hanging prominently in the saloon, Lange couldn’t think to contact Howard any other way than through his mother, and etc., etc.

Despite this, Don’t Come Knocking is full of charm and easy on the eye. The music is wonderful, as is usual in a Wenders film (you could do no better than stock your collection with his soundtracks, whether or not you’ve seen the films). There are a number of beautiful, beautiful scenes, such as the young Earl, pissed at his father, throwing the contents of his apartment through his window, then sitting in the street, tapping his foot on a garbage can lid, playing out his blue on a guitar hooked to his Pignose amp. All the while his girlfriend, played with bravado by Fairuza Balk, dances on the couch beneath an oil well with an American flag flapping in the bright blue sky.

Wenders is not interested in making a heavy point here; he celebrates this country and its beauty subtly and without the usual blather we’ve come to expect in this post 9/11 world. In fact, watching Don’t Come Knocking, it’s as if George W. was never elected. Which is reason enough to enjoy the film.

But it’s also the kind of movie I’d want to have seen in my hometown, the kind of movie kids should see. Between Don’t Come Knocking and Brick, you’ve got a wonderful start to a kid’s lifelong love of movies. In fact, I remember being blown away by the videotape of Wenders’ Wings of Desire and the Coen’s Blood Simple. Those films saved me in the burg of Mt. Pleasant, helping me to realize that Tom Cruise doesn’t have to be in every movie. But now Wenders–who helped both Nicholas Ray and Antonioni get back on their feet–can barely get financing. And Brick’s going to play in the big cities and vanish. And that fear–fear of quality films from uneven, but brilliant, minds–is why Hollywood is such a wasteland.

Images from Me and Mr. Marshall (top) and The Bridge (bottom).

“Selling Democracy: Films of the Marshall Plan” at the Walker Art Center, April 5 – 8.

Tonight, Part One, Out of the Ruins. Featuring: Hunger, It’s Up to You, Between East and West, The Bridge, Me and Mr. Marshall, Life and Death of a Cave City, and Houen Zo. Post-screening discussion by Sandra Schulberg, project director; and Dr. Eric D. Weitz, professor of history and director of the Center for German & European Studies; and Dr. Lisa Disch, professor of political science at the U.

For the next four nights, the Walker Art Center will be showing a collection of some of the most interesting and thought-provoking little movies you could hope to see. Selling Democracy: Films of the Marshall Plan are pretty much as the title suggests–these are propaganda shorts, shown at theaters in Germany and throughout Europe (and especially Germany) after WWII to help win the minds of the populace to the Marshall Plan.

Now, one might assume that propaganda films outside their context and without a discussion with prominent historians (which we get at the Walker) would be frightfully dull, that this is really no more than a series of movies leading to a lecture on history. This is far from the case, however: with the exception of Life and Death of a Cave City, the movies are fascinating. Hunger, with its Bernard Herrmann-like score, drives home the difficulty of post-war life, with horrific shots of children and the elderly scraping together enough food to keep from dying (or chewing on bark to hold hunger at arm’s length). This one did not sit well with the Germans who, according to a provocative City Pages review, shouted out that they were well fed under the Nazis. That’s winning the minds!

It’s Up to You asks the German people straight-up: are you going to walk back into the dark past or strut forward into a bright, democratic future? That is, are you going to go back to being Nazis or toe the line? “This,” the narrator bellows, “or that?” We see shots of happy children crossing the street in “this” and children being rushed screaming into basements to avoid bombs in “that”.

The Bridge was my personal favorite, corny though it is. Dually narrated by a soft-voiced German and then a tough guy Yank pilot, the film documents the Berlin airlift, which was no small feat. The German, who sounds like an American with a silly accent, tells us how the airlift feeds and powers Berlin and how grateful he is, while the Yank is learning more and more about those friendly Germans and no good Commies. There are some odd moments in this one, such as the exchange of a musical teddy-bear, culminating in two American pilots waltzing on the tarmac to the bear’s music.

Me and Mr. Marshall is narrated by another German, this one a “Marshall Man” or “Marshallite”, I can’t remember–suffice it to say he’s committed fully to the Marshall Plan. We see him digging coal out of the ground for Germany’s future, and, as with The Bridge, dissing the Communists.

Life and Death of a Cave City, the only color film, is as dull as those old Disney nature shows. But there are some shots, notably a man carrying a spray of multi-colored balloons against the blinding white buildings, that please the eye.

Houen Zo is the most beautiful of the movies, a “symphony of sounds” accompanying film of Rotterdamites (?) rebuilding their town. It’s like David Lynch without the madness–the noise of machinery, of broken buildings being put back together, men pulling in nets with a handful of fish, man wrestling with giant ropes and spinning mops, all in beautiful black and white cinematography. Gorgeous and hypnotizing.

Mostly, though, the films of the Marshall Plan are a night of self-reflection. I came away amazed at the level of forgiveness in these movies–after all, the friendly Germans in The Bridge and Me and Mr. Marshall were evil Nazis just a few years earlier. (Though this also begs the question as to whether or not we would ever have the same scenes with the Japanese; I have not-so-distant relatives back in Michigan who still refuse to buy Japanese cars but won’t hesitate to own German vehicles). And with It’s Up to You, we could ask ourselves some of the same questions: “This” or “That”? Although if you ever watch movies about the rise of Nazi Germany you really see that, no matter what we Bush-haters may believe, we are quite a ways from that here.

More intriguing to me is how quickly we were ready to fight in the years following the second World War. These films are not just about trying to convince a former enemy of the victor’s goodwill, but really, they are about creating a new Nazi, a new oppressor, in the Soviets. And how many wars have we fought since then? And how many peoples have we had to convince of our goodwill?

For the next few days, you could spend your time at home, watching whatever’s on the tube, or at the movies, with the newest Ice Age. Or you could go to the Walker and watch films that will never see the light of television, never find their way into a DVD, films with such beauty and meaning they’ll follow you for days.

Detail from “Brushes With Fame!” by Steve Willis (scroll down link for bio).

I once dated the guy who held Schwarzenegger’s cigar on that awful Christmas movie, I forget what it’s called. Man was he proud. Bo that is… I don’t think Arnold cared one way or the other…

…

Yeh, I worked at this deli in Chi-town where Bob Balaban used to come, nearly every day, I swear. The guy could eat. Pickles. Loved his pickles, had to have two or three with every sammich. And he could eat the biggest one’s we got, lotsa meat, lotsa sauce, that seemed to be his motto. Sammich-wise.

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You ever touch Tom Cruise? Sister’s girlfriend used to do his nails, on the set of one of those Mission Impossible movies, and I guess the guy was cold. Dead o’ summer, this guy’s paw’s as cold as ice, man…

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In the late 70s, I flipped off Madonna. That was back in Bay City, Michigan. It was her, too, Madonna. Cut me off on Euclid Avenue.

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If there’s anyone I’ve ever met with a warm handshake, it’s Philip Seymour Hoffman.

…

My wife and I decided we were going to go have brunch in Stillwater, because everyone keeps telling us we should. Oh, it’s so pretty, downtown is pretty, the bridge to Wisconsin’s pretty, the leaves, the rocks, all that. Well, we walk around, impressed I’ll admit, and we get to this little cafe. Looks good, think we’ll have some breakfast. So we go inside, and there’s Jessica Lange sitting there with Sam Whatsisname, the cowboy she’s married to. I elbow Sue and nod and she’s impressed, and we go to order our breakfast–it’s one of those places where you have to place an order, a cafe, not so much a restaurant.

Anyway, the barista flips. I mean he flips. “Don’t you look at Jessica Lange!” he says, none too quietly, I might add. We both give him a look like he’s the nut that he is, and he repeats, almost yelling. “Do not look at Jessica Lange or Sam Shepard. They are members of this community and not here for you to gawk at!”

So I told him we weren’t staring and he starts to bray some more and finally Jessica and Sam stand up and walk out, looking pretty pissed. Now the guy really goes off. “Look what you did! You drove out Jessica!” So Sue and I take off, not before I curse him out.

As we walk out, Jessica Lange’s pulling her coat on and my wife bugs her eyes out at Lange and says “How’s that for staring!” Jessica, I have to admit, looked pretty bummed. Pff… you can keep Stillwater for all I care…

…

It was weird. For as much a fan as I am, I never met Walter. Even when he was in town for the Grumpy series. I always just missed him. I’d go into my favorite cafe, and the waitress would nod at an empty coffee cup and say, “That was Walter’s”. Damn. Then I’d go to the convenience store, right in downtown on St. Peter, and there’s be an empty can of cream soda. “Walter’s?” I’d ask. Sure enough. Or in the park, a pal would say, “See that guy?” “What guy?” “That one, with the… hell you missed it! Walter Matthau!” This kept going on and on and on and on, and finally, I just sat down one day in Rice Park and decided to wait until he walked by. Well, I only did that for about an hour or two, ’cause I realized it was pretty stupid.

But you know, it’s like I sense his presence. I look at objects in town and wonder, did Walter touch that?

…

I think my sister sold Girl Scout cookies to the Coens. She’s got all her old receipts, I should ask her to look it up.

…

Fresh from the wire:

Mark your calendars for Wednesday, May 3 and make a date with a curbside in St. Paul, MN: A Prairie Home Companion, the film version of our beloved (or not-so-beloved, depending on your tastes) public radio programme, will be making its “Minnesota Premiere” at the Fitzgerald Theater. What does that mean for you, ladies and gents? Why nothing more than the finest in stargazing. According to the friendly press agent:

In addition to Garrison Keillor and Robert Altman, the following actors are expected to attend: Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin. Others may join the event.

You are, of course, not invited. But who says we can’t crush against security, ogle and wave and even scream with joy at the sight of Lindsay Lohan?