Film critics do not advise: Films that are better not to revise
Not all films stand the test of time.. For each of us, at least once in life, there was a moment when, for sentimental reasons, you decide to show the new boyfriend your favorite boyhood film - and in about fifteen minutes you want to fall through the earth with shame. There are also films for which it is simply scary to take up again: it is terrible to break their unsteady charm. Or just scary. We decided to put together a kind of antitop and asked film critics to tell which films might be worth seeing only once in a lifetime.
"My Blueberry Nights"
As a child, Kar Wai seemed the most subtle, the most modern, the most sensual - and so on - the director. I needed to revise it for work, it became very sad. It seemed that only "2046" and "Blueberry Nights" was a careless step into a heart-to-heart chatter, but no, it always was. “Wild Days” once seemed to be the most perfect film in the world, and today it resembles a mannered guide for a novice pikaper. "Chungking Express" is surprising, perhaps, because once the director could deliver the same song thirty times in a row and he wasn’t anything for it. The “love mood” could have been better if half of his timekeeping had not been given to beautiful walkways down the street in moderation. I am writing all this without any kind of gloating: there are directors and pictures that are vital in their time, but it’s better not to return to them, but to keep warm memories about them.
"Golden fever"
Chaplin's "Gold Rush", a lead classic, as a child seemed to me funny and funny - eating a shoe, dancing with buns and stuff. And only when I saw him on a special show in a noise voice recording in the cycle of film screenings “Silent Cinema plus Live Music,” I realized what a terrible film this was. There we are talking about the uterine horror and children's fears: the evil uncle will now devour you, becoming a bear. Nowhere is it safe: your house suddenly begins to sway under your feet, and you fly out through the open door and hang over the precipice, barely having time to cling to the threshold. Everyone will forget about your birthday. You go out to dance, all eyes are directed at you, and your pants fall off, what a shame. And then, on New Year's Eve, Charlie is waiting for a beautiful girlfriend in a brilliant gold dress played by Georgia Hale, but instead of her a horse muzzle appears at the door, like a ghost from a nightmare. Funny comedy - just laugh. All you had to do was change the musical accompaniment to see what the film really was about, how many fears from the subconsciousness that are disguised as gags are locked in it.
"Holy Motors Corporation" "
Most often it happens the other way around - you watch a film at the festival and hate it: it is your sixth today, midnight soon, and tomorrow you will again get up at half past six to ride a bicycle from a shelter that you shoot on five. It takes six months, the film is blooming with an amazing flower in the desert of Russian hire, and you realize that you didn’t see the masterpiece. All that I managed to love before 2000, has stood the test of time: the "Screams", and "Aliens", and von Trier. But lately there are surprises.
When in Cannes for the first time I looked at the “Holy Motors” of Karax, it seemed to me that there was a firework in my heart, like in “Lovers from the New Bridge”. Each reincarnation of Laban is a blow in the gut, so unexpected and unlike anything (minus Monsieur Shit). Such a delight from the fact that you penetrate into this dream and begin to settle in it and guess about something. Six months later I was watching a movie in Moscow, the projector was awful, on the screen in the dark Laban’s gray shadow was swarming. But this is not only the case: everything has become too predictable, disposable, infantile - this dream did not want to look again. A typical case of fake Christmas decorations. And about the fact that it is terrible to reconsider: for the first time from “Cargo 200” I had a tremor for two days, the second time it seemed to me a comedy, the third one was a love story, and I will not watch the fourth one.
"Terminator"
The most terrible disappointment I received not so long ago, watching a good movie "Terminator". The disturbing nightmare that was caused by watching this film more than twenty years ago has faded. Remained strong low-budget action film with elements of dystopia. And Schwarzenegger is so indecently young. The heart responds only at the sight of a young, unsuspecting Sarah Connor. Run, honey, run.
"Death of gods"
If it does not force an acute professional need, the main and most beloved films in general try not to reconsider. In order not to jinx it. And this has already happened. Back in Soviet times, I looked at the "Twilight of the Gods" Visconti on a black and white counter. And so he remembered it forever - as a great black and white film. Seeing in color, was almost disappointed, as if the pure image of first love turned out to be unnecessarily embellished with makeup.
"Nights of Cabiria"
Films Fellini - a mandatory minimum program when meeting with the movie. It's like a monument to an unknown hero for you, where parents bring in childhood and tell about his exploits. They tend to trust, and the hero - silently admire. When you first watch this is what dominates you as a spectator. But after years the return to it already exempts from similar conventions. The recent revision of the film "Nights of Cabiria", for example, evoked a feeling of great deception - directorial, historical, etc., where everything was annoying: from excessive kitsch and clumsiness to the staging to the director's strange arrogance towards his characters. That is, in a striking way, in one film, the worst of what happened in neo-realism and Italian melodramas of the 60-70s. In general, it would be better if I was a child I immediately discovered the truth that the greatest Italian director, Raffaello Matarazzo.
"Blair Witch"
The first time I watched this movie, without knowing anything about it in advance, in a screen copy, on a bad monitor, with huge Chinese (for some reason) subtitles that obscured the image. I was scared as if I had met my own death and miraculously survived. I remember that in order to return to reality, I immediately put on some trivial drama with Kevin Spacey - and all the way I was afraid for Kevin Spacey: "Lord, he doesn’t know what threatens him!" After a couple of weeks, there was a press preview at the Rolan cinema. Critics giggled and insisted on each other. Fear has disappeared along with Chinese subtitles. In general, never review movies that you are lucky enough to get scared. This is a valuable feeling, it must be protected.
"So far, so close!"
In the fifth minute Mikhail Gorbachev appears in the frame, who is seized by an angel from behind. He reflects on the meaning of life, then says that now he will read out "our compatriot Fyodor Tyutchev, the poet and diplomat." And the word "compatriot" utters something strange - something like "compatriot", I did not fully understand. Trying to make a phonetic analysis, I rewound at this point again and again, as a result, I was covered with unbridled laughter, and the view had to be postponed. For several years I made seven or eight desperate attempts to watch this film beyond the sixth minute, but then I interpreted its name in my own way and somehow calmed down.
"Love is colder than death"
Here you need some kind of memory, a case. But there is no memory. There is an image from the past that oscillates like a circle from a lamp (or is it a memory?). He is talking about such a deadly beautiful life, figures caught in movement when they crouch for a shot (eyes narrowed to be more precise). These are the first Fassbinder films that were once seen, somewhere on the film, most likely in the halls on Krasnaya Presnya, in halls as small and dark as they are. And, no, there is a memory. I remember trying to get to the "Innocent" Visconti (children under sixteen) at the age of thirteen and put cardboard in a shoe to look taller. "Love is colder than death" - looking at him with today's sober look - all rests on such cardboard, stuffed in a children's shoe for adulthood, importance and beauty. This angel of death, Ulli Lommel, who swallowed a hanger, this hard-working teenager Rainer in his rudeness, these passages of Strabub's fascinated self, and finally, this heroine by the name of Eric Romer (sic!) - all this now resembles distinctly dark nights of sixteen years over the writing of someone else's novel . Of course, about death (about what), and, of course, with a verter lip bitten. Once this passion against the background of the parental kitchen was congruent to yours. Now you look at it like Trigorin on Trepleva. Of course, we were much happier at eighteen.
"Whiskers"
Once he showed a girlfriend of twenty-four years old a favorite film and nearly died out of shame. No, Yuri Mamin’s prophetic comedy is not at all deprived of moments of pure genius: the grotesque story of the Führer-Pushkinist and his sideburnist henchmen, terrorizing the provincial town with torchlight processions and hipsters ’pogroms, wittily retells the past (in particular,“ The Death of the Gods ”and the pogroms of the hipsters, retelling the past with witty (in particular,“ The Death of the Gods ”and the pogroms of hipsters, retelling the past with witty (in particular,“ The Death of the Gods ”and the pogroms of hipsters, retells the past wittyly (in particular,“ The Death of the Gods ”and Hipster’s Pogroms, Reconnecting the Past with Reason (in particular,“ The Death of the Gods ”and Hipster Pogroms, Retelling the Wit) for example, the activities of youth movements of patriotic orientation). But, my God, what a torment to look now at how Mamin draws the main opponents of militant frachnik - painted "informals". All that perestroika freedom, about which today it has been accepted with enthusiasm and edification to tell, seems after repeated viewing of “Sideburns” a naive and unfashionable outburst of demonic idiocy. And how to live with this sediment now is not clear.
"Space Odyssey 2001"
I sincerely believe that Pauline Cale should be obeyed and never reconsider anything, because there are so many unwatched films in the world and so little time that looking without need for a second time what I’ve already seen is wildly unpragmatic. But in any case, it is not necessary to revise Kubrikov's "Space Odyssey." First, because it should be done only on the big screen and in extremely high quality, and this is possible only in an ideal world. Secondly, because most of us saw her at a more or less tender age, and this, in my opinion, is an emotional shock to a level that cannot be forgotten.
Fifteen years later, all the details are erased, remember from there, by and large, only singing monoliths, Hal's voice, the white room and Strauss's music there, and the memory that you saw something gigantic, very far away, inexplicably remains for a lifetime of crystal clear purity. grand and at the same time wildly scary. If you reconsider it, it will neither be better nor worse, and you will not love it more or less - just this will not happen again, a lot of questions will arise, and you will have to wait another fifteen years to keep only the main thing in memory.
"2046"
"2046" Wong Kar Wai is the only film in the world that I always want to review, but for several years now I can’t make myself do it. The director shot it for four years, the premiere was constantly postponed - the maestro was finishing something, re-shooting. The wait was endless, the movie was joking that it will be released just in 2046. When the picture was released in 2004, it was not at all long by today's standards (only two hours and ten minutes), but a terribly stretched, almost unbearable collection of some emotional fragments, shadows, dull pain, incomprehensible than caused.
Wong Kar Wai made his best films almost out of chaos, worked without a script, made up stories already on the editing, could make an entire film out of a short anecdote that fell out of a single plot. All these films were about Hong Kong. In 1996, when the city was given to China, Wong stopped shooting modern Hong Kong. He transferred his heroes first to emigration ("Happy Together"), then to the past ("Love Mood"). “2046” in one of the initial ideas was devoted to what became of Hong Kong in the first fifty years under the rule of China. Then the director added the heroes of the "Love Mood" to the film. Then he completed something, retraced. As a result, “2046” became about how Wong Kar Wai himself, having lost forever that native Hong Kong, lost control over the chaos, and this destroyed the genius of one of the best directors in the world.
"Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer"
I am almost nothing, not even prisons and soums, I am not afraid. Moreover, to review films for fear of being disappointed: this does not happen to me - I was not an idiot at least five, at least twenty-five years ago, when I was fascinated by this or that film. But there is one that I would never dare to reconsider for fear of an animal, irrational, primitive. This is "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", the debut of John McNaughton, four years did not roll even in liberal America (only, it seems, Scorsese's help helped remove "Henry" from the shelf). This is a chronicle of the true deeds of the maniac Henry Lee Lucas (the first role of Michael Rooker, whom I sincerely respect - you must not just be stupid or brave to accept such an offer), the only one - for me - is a physically intolerable film.
In all common bogets, like the miserable Pazoliniusky "Fat" or brutal meat horror films, there are saving straws - an exquisite form, painful voluptuousness, courage of grand guinolles. In Henry, nothing; icy (if you believe that it is cold in hell, then hellish) impassivity of intonation, total anhedonia and, to hell with it, naturalism in the depiction of death, the main thing is pathoanatomical indifference to life (without the pathoanatomical beauty of the prepared body). I, of course, would ban and destroy this film altogether - and to hell with liberalism.
"12 chairs"
In fact, remembering the proper case is quite difficult, somehow everything turned out to be extremely revised in the vein. Almost the only one that comes to mind, is why an even brighter episode from the audience practice. It was about ten years ago, and in the company of one film director, one film producer and one film actor, I was going to reconsider something from a win-win classic. The choice fell on "12 chairs" by Leonid Gaidai, then just appeared on DVD and specially reserved by the owner of the house for a similar occasion.
Already about ten minutes after the start, the air in the room became so thick with general awkwardness that, sorry, it was possible to spread it on bread. As it became clear from a very expressive discussion of the situation that followed the extraction of the ill-fated disc into the light of day (aftertaste was eventually varnished by some kind of anime), vague suspicions about this screen adaptation were tormented by the souls of almost everyone present, who, however, convinced the last oneself, that this is nothing more than a twist of memories, but in fact everything is wonderful, sparkling and ridiculous, almost at the level of "It can not be!". Alas, but this film remains the main failure of Haidai.
"Clockwork Orange"
The main source of frustration in teenage movie ideals, of course, lies in the field of cult cinema. Fortunately, I haven’t reviewed “The Mole” of Khodorovsky for a hundred years, or, for example, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” but a year ago it still caught up with me - in a somewhat unexpected form of “Clockwork Orange” by Kubrick. Not that he ever seemed to be one of his favorites, but all his elements were so imprinted in the DNA that thoughts of possible betrayal did not even arise. According to the memoirs, "Orange" stood firmly in the iconic canon in all its VHS-n charm, but ten years later and on the big screen I suddenly saw some completely unfamiliar film, which I, nevertheless, knew by heart.
In the first ten minutes I really wanted to close my eyes, after half an hour I had to run away. Ultra-violence, singing in the rain and devochki did not cause anything but the desire to throw something heavy at the screen. What used to be viewed as a generally extremely good and witty movie now looked like a bad BBC shny production of a cult novel made by a man who is desperately trying to joke, although he knows that he has never had a sense of humor. The fact that Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Eyed still seem to be one of the funniest films on earth is doubly surprising.
Photo: Block 2 Pictures (2), Pierre Grise Productions, Cinema 84, Eichberg-Film GmbH, Dino de Laurentiis, Haxan Films, Road Movies, Antiteater-X-Film, Lenfilm, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / Stanley Kubrick Productions, Maljack Productions, Mosfilm Studios, Warner Bros.
The material was first published on Look At Me in 2013.