Showing posts with label Peter Weir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter Weir. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

The Cars that Ate Paris

It's tough to say what's bound to happen if you leave isolated communities on their own. 

Should representatives of a central government keep in consistent contact as they blossom?

If they had in The Cars that Ate Paris, the situation may have been different, and the thriving supplemental auto parts industry may not have flourished so devastatingly. 

The leader would have been proactively concerned.

He's attempting to facilitate familial community.

Local inhabitants can routinely depend on an uplifting speech to keep them motivated. 

He's not particularly adept at generating sincere enthusiasm, yet still attempts to absolutely encourage village-wide co-operation and understanding.

Inhabitants have grown to be somewhat restless due to a lack of sure and steady employment, and have taken to recklessly engage in spirited acts of hard-driven disjunction. 

One individual survives and isn't sent to the local hospital, where outsiders are usually lobotomized after their cars are blown off the road. 

He lacks vision and focus and usually seems quite friendly and unobtrusive, and is therefore permitted to live in the town assuming he doesn't cause any mischief.

Xenophobia is taken to ridiculous degrees as the murderous townsfolk routinely express themselves, alone and forgotten in the far distant Outback where rarely a traveller comes passing through.

Absurd no doubt but indubitably commensurate with low-budget frights from around the world, its innovative use of vehicular vocation demonstrating odd technoautomotive authenticity.

The ways in which they doctor up their cars with intricate designs and supplemental parts, reminded me of Fury Road and I wondered if The Cars that Ate Paris had been historically instructional. 

Then it occurred to me that the phenom's likely widespread across the sweltering resourceful Outback, and that these films are artistic examples of something I've never seen in North America. 

I would argue that the moment when the clueless lobotomized outsiders show up at the mandatory town dance, transports The Cars that Ate Paris to another level, that's as shocking as it is original.

A challenge if you like old school cult films the existence of which encourage disbelief.

Before heading out on the road.

Destination carefree and uncharted. 

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

The Year of Living Dangerously

Arriving within the tantalizing unknown with no contacts and resolute viability, working within unfamiliar parameters exhilarating recourse refined animation.

The ambiguous reflexes of the bold indeterminate fluidly encouraging resilient jazz rhythms, inordinate pluck and lithe tenacity generate immersion beyond expression.

Mr. Hamilton (Mel Gibson) finds himself far from Australia working his first assignment as a foreign correspondent, with no contacts and a relative lack of sympathy locking down conducive facilitated succession. 

Fortunately compassionate reason curiously materializes from the opaque outset, and an integrated ethicist possessing spry fluencies lends a hand and quizzical quarter (Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan). 

Hamilton is able at least to write about something after the interviews he cleverly conducts, but he's arrived at a pivotal moment in local history wherein which intriguing narratives harrowingly instigate.

By no means shy, he pursues the lead with undaunted gripping paramount resolve. 

Risking both life and flourishing love interest (Sigourney Weaver as Jill Bryant). 

To discover impeccable headlines. 

Tough to say where the cynosure harkens with the most consequent influential reckoning, if it's not Montréal, New York, or Denver, it's slipped past my residual wanderings.

Why one location would ever be so prominent in a multifaceted international continuum?, makes less sense to me than the lateral alternative expanding networks exponential variability.

But if you like where you're living it certainly seems as if it embodies practical universalization, especially if such considerations concern it in the least and it could care less about generalized pertinence. 

At times it seems it would be wonderful to simply stay on the island forever.

If you didn't know people elsewhere.

Or have thrilling engagements at times beyond borders.

That sense is captured in The Year of Living Dangerously which makes its environs seem cataclysmically irresistible, as so many films set in specific locations do, future research compelling forthcoming.

The enticing poise of the unfamiliar subtly celebrated like vital novelty.

I finally saw this film.

Linda Hunt doesn't disappoint. 

Friday, November 22, 2019

Witness

A young Amish child (Lukas Haas as Samuel) on his first trip to the big city, finds himself immersed in high level corruption, after witnessing a brutal murder, while waiting for his train to depart.

As unaware of the repercussions as the honest cop who takes his statement (Harrison Ford as John Book), he's soon revealed the identity of the killer, and it's indeed one of New York's finest (Danny Glover as McFee).

Book soon transfers the knowledge to his supervisor, but he's placed his trust in the wrong elite cop, shots fired shortly thereafter, moments later he's on the crazed run.

To Amish country.

Where no one will find him.

If he can keep that yap shut.

And refrain from scandalous endeavours.

Work abounds in the old school surroundings, as does temptation, and orthodox rules.

Surveillance haunts disputed emotion.

There's no quarter, no frank ergo sum.

Long before cellphones guaranteed law enforcement could ubiquitously monitor the population, public movements were still often scrutinized, private pastimes uprightly presumed.

In tight-knit communities anyways, and at work, and at home, the concept of privacy still had much more meaning, and could at least be theoretically conceived.

Without vast resources.

Headstrong individualism meets its panoptic particulars in Peter Weir's forbidding Witness, as a trustworthy by the book policeperson closely follows established rules.

Having once taken procedure for granted, he struggles to meticulously adjust, his genuine goodness guiding the way, his bold temper begetting comeuppance.

A sympathetic depiction of the Amish unreels within, beyond sociopolitical constructs, a simple existence with nothing to hide, harmless living for strict rule followers.

The disruption may indeed be controversial, but it's integrated without fuss or alarm, peaceful ways still cognizant of justice, willing to aid distraught virtue in peril.

L'amour.

Restraint.

Confinements of the hypothetical.

Urban tempers so feisty condoned.

An odd mix that could have been more controversial.