Zardoz

Imagine COVID-19 as reflective of desires to keep demographics stratified, with no intermingling amongst different collectives, even though at the moment isolation is paramount.

The title sounded cool and it stars Sean Connery.

I imagine John Boorman didn't like ivory towers much.

Or the politics of the left in the early '70s.

Zardoz expresses such sentiments anyways with blunt instinctual derision.

It's absurd menacing political satire.

Confrontationally conceived.

In a hypothetical future, the elite have sealed themselves off within an impenetrable exclusive zone, where they live immortal lives of plenty, or at least with everything they need.

Outer regions know only chaos in maddening woebegone conflict.

The immortals have struggled to achieve enlightenment and have compiled vast repertoires of scientific knowledge, but some of them have grown restless, bored, tired of the limits of infinite perfection.

Fortunately for them, an enforcer stows away on the giant head that travels between realms, hiding beneath the grain, intent on acquiring wisdom (Sean Connery as Zed).

He introduces a unique element.

Curious carnal contrariety.

The immortals have cast off emotion you see, and live within stoic reasonable boundaries, with no children or families or nurturing, just rarefied rational discourse.

Subversive intentions plaque somnambulistic.

Those in control have qualified everything.

Gross exaggeration pervades the rigid Zardoz, but I still wonder how it was received at the time? I've certainly never heard anyone discuss it and don't recall it ever showing up in rerun.

I imagine it was cutting edge sci-fi for the '70s, at least some of the visuals are quite impressive, not the giant head itself so scandalous, but there are noteworthy technical features.

I still wonder if it was meant to be taken seriously, on some level I don't quite comprehend, but so much of it seems like solemn farce, like barbarians inside the gates.

But what seemed like solemn farce in recent memory is trying to transform reasonable debate these days, and what used to seem absurd is taken seriously, the public sphere in free-fall flux.

If people are currently worried that desires to function self-sufficiently are threatening the proliferation of the nuclear family, perhaps they were in the '70s (and long before then) as well, although I remain to be sure uncertain, even if I'm leaning towards "they definitely were".

A future where people suddenly want to stop breeding, generally, no matter what ideology predominates, seems highly unlikely to me, however.

There's just too much comfort in relaxed recreation.

With agency attached to the conjugally bold.

Nice that the opportunity to not have a family exists though, medieval pressures must have been stifling.

Can't say I recommend Zardoz.

Although it's certainly out of this world.

Keyhole

Where to begin.

We've broken into a building that's surrounded. Some of us have passed on. A search must be conducted. The patriarch is in charge. Part of his family is in attendance. Memories are temporally fluctuating.

Clocks ticking, imperious and constant. Joy revels in an immediate departure. What's to be made of these meaningful incursions? Electronic fissures resonating incorporeally.

And there's need of wallpaper.

Guy Maddin harnesses a permanently detached constructive sensibility to his productively ironic surreal cheeky familial incandescent aesthetic in his new film Keyhole, and this time there's no foundation to which one can directly cling, other than Ulysses, or David Lynch's Black Lodge, perhaps.

Few filmmakers can successfully unleash structured serpentine points of disjointed transient distinct significations through the popularized lampooned esoteric intellectual constituency as multidimensionally as Maddin.

We are provided with clues to what in fact might be going on. From these clues, depending upon the ways in which they are strategized, specific arguments (rhetorical facts) can be generated. Supporting evidence can be gathered from interpretations based upon hypotheses framed by logic, inasmuch as they fit into the whole, insofar as they cohesively belong.

To this precise moment.

Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) is in charge. This much we know. His authority is paramount to Keyhole's flexibly united incongruity as he tries to comprehend the motivations of the other.

He is also invincible.

He is trying to return to his family, some of whom he doesn't recognize. He seeks answers to questions he is in/capable of asking. The high seas have become his house as the internet minimizes geographic exploration. His omniscience is tempered by his forgetfulness as he struggles to determine what has been substantially dematerialized. An idea becomes pragmatic when historical echoes align themselves with its potent focused intent.

For the time being.

Leap frogging from estimation to realization for genuine enigmatic jaunts, from which catalysts instructively and divergently testify, while pliantly managing internal disruptions, his allegiances deteriorate as the hierarchy pulsates, made all the more hauntingly vivid by its enduring staggering lack.

It's about generating inextricable mysteries from which manifold dimensions (jurisprudence, politics, science) can find practical applications after mining their way through the discursive data.

And a good old-fashioned game of catch.

Rubber

Quentin Dupieux intelligently and playfully pulls off a ridiculous off-beat puréed slice of incongruity with Rubber, a film which challenges you to keep watching even though its subject matter is incredibly discombobulated.

Question: can we improve upon the typical Hollywood horror-comedy by stripping it down to its bear essentials, presenting an inanimate villain, crafting a film within a film, and then virulently exterminating its audience?

Or to put it another way, is watching a tire that rolls around randomly blowing up things and people preferable to series such as Final Destination or I Know What You Did Last Summer (note that I did like Final Destination 2)?

Without providing any back story explaining why or how the tire gained consciousness and why it decided to start randomly destroying.

The answer is yes, it can be improved upon, and a back story is not required, if you don't care in the slightest what your audience thinks but still take the time to expertly craft an audacious non sequitur which appears as if it was haphazardly constructed.

Rather than simply destroying the minds of its audience with nauseating dialogue and unimaginative viaducts, Rubber simply destroys its audience half way through after they ravenously gorge on a roasted turkey.

Rather than trying to seem as if there's a point or introduce something saccharinely tragic, Rubber makes it quite clear that there is no reason structuring its dementia, and proceeds to unreel unabashedly.

But nothing can exist without placing itself within a multifaceted logical fulcrum, as each subject is free to express their interpretive difference in regards to the ways in which artistic objects are constructed (or sporting objects etc.), thanks to the freedom built into democratic societies made viable by the internet, and it's possible to gain constructive insights into complicated dynamics from bizarre examples of lucid frivolity, if you search for them (search for them within the new show Picnicface, especially the Lost Highway themed episode wherein the Mystery Man looks like John Waters).

Reason underlies Rubber's tracks although its content salutes insanity. But it's only insane from the point of view of the monotonous narrative that has been produced to shackle the many as the few exercise their free self-development (Terry Eagleton), and from this point of view, accentuating difference, it makes nothing but perfect sense, and a rational explanation is presented for its not so subtle ending.

Tsurugidake: Ten no ki (The Summit: A Chronicle of Stones)

Mountains. Climbin' 'em. Exercising precision in their classification. Work rationalized according to stubborn bureaucratic consistencies. An imperial map in the making.

Japan's military has one more mountain to catalogue before said map can be expertly articulated.

All they need is the right person for the job.

Yoshitaro Shibasaki (Tadanobu Asano) has climbed his fair share of mountains but finds the unconquered Mt. Tsurugidake somewhat intimidating. Pressed by his superiors to perform for posterity he overcomes his initial hesitation, with the aid of volumes delicately cared for by his local librarians, and proceeds unabated. At the risk of offending villagers whose religion forbids challenging Mt. Tsurugidake's treacherous peaks, he finds a local guide (Teruyuki Kagawa as Chojiro Uji) and begins his quest. Together they search for a route to the summit, hoping to outwit the adventurous Alpine Club who has declared they will climb the mountain first, thereby hoping to tarnish the military's reputation.

While Yoshitaro and Chojiro explore using equipment crafted by the ingenuity of the Japanese people, the Alpine Club adopts European technologies.

A number of survey stones must be placed at the top of the peaks which surround Mt. Tsurugidake as well, in order for the military's mapmakers to realize their cartographic ambitions.

Towers must also be built around these stones. Time callously ticks past. A team of courageous individuals is assembled. The snow keeps falling.

Daisaku Kimura's Tsurugidake: Ten no ki (The Summit: A Chronicle of Stones) is an epic tale, modestly crafted according to traditional guidelines. An intransigent macho administration makes shortsighted decisions while a group of bold workers heroically carve new ground. Elsewhere lines are crossed but respect is maintained as openminded resiliency takes into account alternative points of view.

In fact, apart from the military administration, respect permeates every aspect of this film and it was comforting to watch as people didn't get bogged down by petty differences for 139 minutes.

The result is a subjective victory for two tenacious teams who refuse to let the pursuit of an intractable ideal disrupt their herculean achievement.

Sticking together. Trying to find a way. Accepting that the realities structuring certain professions are simply larger than life. And continuing to strive onwards even though survival instincts consistently question the logic of your perseverance.

The creation of this film directly corresponds to the endeavours bravely undertaken internally and externally by its cast, a harmonious collaboration firmly sustained between subject and object.

Shock Corridor

Just how far will one person go to win the Pulitzer Prize?

Journalist Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) discovers an unsolved murder case and decides to engage in some psychological detective work of his own in order to bring the deceptive culprit to justice. After convincing a psychiatrist that he lacks sanity, his information hunt begins in a state mental hospital where three perennial residents witnessed the crime in question. Challenging his reason as he acclimatizes himself to life in the Shock Corridor, he discovers that when his clandestine lucidity is synthesized with a particular brand of patient curiosity, he can bring his troubled co-denizens back from the brink for long enough to unravel their valuable references. But his search is tempered by a mischievous and seductive mental quid pro quo that subtly reveals its malevolent intensity as he comes closer and closer to delineating the subject of his desire.

Through the passage of time.

Two of the three witnesses find themselves locked up because they have been unable to face the predominant homogenized semantic denominators that structure the social lives of their democratic communities, and have in turn embraced said denominators in a ridiculous fashion, thereby taking control of the means of production, subjectively situating themselves within positions of power.

One, while a prisoner of war, flirted with communism as a reaction against the bigotry that conditioned his family life growing up, and was given a dishonourable discharge after being exchanged. He was shunned afterwards and adopted the persona of an heroic confederate general to compensate.

The other, an African-American student attending a recently desegregated Southern University, was broken by the toxic racist sewer of white supremacy and reinvented himself as a grand wizard in the ku klux klan.

The third, being unable to handle the fact that he had helped to create weapons of mass destruction, reverted to an infantile state in order to forget the past.

Thus, in order for Johnny to solve the case and win his Pulitzer, he must function as an inclusive understanding open minded trustworthy citizen, thereby normalizing the activities his co-denizens engaged in prior to being committed in order to provide them with rational voices.

Unfortunately, Mr. Barrett was concerned primarily with winning the Pulitzer and not with capturing a criminal, and doesn't possess the fortitude required to individually combat madness's cloak and dagger, losing his voice in the process.

I think that's what Fuller's saying.

The Couch Trip

Some solid ideas are in place.

John W. Burns, Jr. (Dan Aykroyd) is causing trouble for his lacklustre psychiatrist, Lawrence Baird (David Clennon). But just as he is about to be transferred back to prison, he intercepts a phone call offering Baird a position as a psychological radio host in Los Angeles, sitting in for one George Maitlin (Charles Grodin), which he promptly accepts. All he needs to do is escape from the ward, fly to LA, convince a shrewd lawyer that he is a trained professional, and dispense beneficial practical wisdom live with the electric confidence of a warm and friendly person of the people. But before he can get his act in place, another individual with a somewhat skewed relationship with 1980s socio-cultural sublimations catches instinctual wind of his former identity (Walter Matthau as Donald Becker), and decides that it's time to cash in on his disenfranchised observations as well.

The Couch Trip's form is well thought out. If I was in charge of deciding which pitches receive the opportunity to be fleshed out whimsically I definitely would have given that for the The Couch Trip the green light. But unfortunately, while gathering critical creative support, unable to sustain the potential of its expectations, it ironically suffers a nervous breakdown, from which it rarely recovers.

When you have an over-the-top idea which requires a sharp degree of energetic immediacy, one impossible situation to overcome after another, the ways in which that energetic immediacy is galvanized must be sensationally plausible while seeming run of the mill. And The Couch Trip's script, boldly defended by Dan Aykroyd, lacks the wherewithal needed to project even a paltry degree of plausibility, and therefore only transmits a mediocre current.

Walter Matthau does save the day from time to time, and the script is deep, establishing multiple subplots and providing several characters with room to flow. But the material with which said characters are provided falls consistently flat, and although the idea of John W. Burns, Jr. works for me on every level, the predicates and commentaries used to build up his rhetorical flexibility do not, at least in terms of making a film entertaining.