The Chaser

1928 silent black comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Harry's wife, possibly persuaded by her mother, decides to divorce the good-for-nothing. The judge decides to teach him a lesson instead and orders the husband and wife to reverse roles. This doesn't work out well for Harry who decides to end his life, and when that doesn't work, he goes golfing. It's almost funny!

No, actually it's not very funny at all. This was the second of a trio of movies that Langdon directed after being a very successful silent film comedian. Unfortunately for Langdon, nobody liked them and his career was ruined. I can't recall seeing Langdon in anything else and decided to give him a go, suspecting--after a little research--that I would enjoy the movies he directed more than the stuff that's supposed to be halfway decent. That third film, Heart Trouble, is sadly a lost one, by the way. Harry Langdon doesn't have the personality of a Chaplin or a Buster or the likability of Harold Lloyd. In fact, I would almost say that he's unlikable. The bits in The Chaser are either poorly timed or just not funny at all. As an actor, he overcooks the comedy while trying desperately to be as stone-faced as Keaton. Check out a scene where he's jumping up and down on a porch, really for no reason at all other than to set up another visual gag with inexplicable cats that will have you scratching your head more than laughing. Or when he shakes his hat "comically" during an almost-funny scene featuring what he believes to be the undead. There's an earlier excruciatingly long scene in which he's trying to get an egg for his wife. You watch and think, "Man, for as long as he's setting this up, the payoff better be something great." And then you're disappointed because it's only almost great. So why did I end up liking this? I like how Langdon took risks, taking the humor to some pretty dark places. Divorce really shouldn't be funny, but marital issues had been used in early comedies before. But an extended series of failed suicide attempts forty years before Harold and Maude? One of those gags had an extended shot of Langdon lying on the floor under a sheet. I mean, for a really long time, you're just staring at a frozen screen. It's risky stuff, and it might have been funny if it had just been lengthier. I also liked this movie because of a sneaky subtext. Langdon is very obviously making a movie about impotence, another daring move for the late-20s. So while this isn't a great 1920's comedy that should hoist Langdon up there with the big three silent comedy stars, it is a fascinating little movie with some neat ideas.

Dead Poets Society

1989 anti-conformist propaganda

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An unorthodox literature teacher at the Welton Academy clashes with the "tradition, honor, discipline, and excellence" ideology of the all-boys prep school. He's a terrible influence on his students, encouraging them to tear up their textbooks, stand on their desks, read poetry, and shoot themselves in the face. They form the titular poetry-reading club and start learning to think for themselves.

How dangerous is it to start a movie with bagpipes? And how many misguided and just plain awful English teachers did this thing spawn? As a high schooler who liked to imagine himself as a burgeoning nonconformist, this movie appealed to me, but I wondered what my stuffy middle-aged self would think. Well, it's a bit manipulative and pretty stuffy (despite the bagpipes), a movie that does often seize the cliches, but Robin Williams' subdued and exceptional performance and two handfuls of key memorable scenes make this an entertaining and downright inspiring motion picture. Most of the classroom (or sometimes out-of-the-classroom) scenes with Williams teaching are really good. The first class scene in the hallway with the ghosts of Welton's past and their similar haircuts, the barbaric yawping scene's, the anti-Pritchard page-ripping, the desk-standing perspective lesson. It's good stuff, all things that I've tried with my teaching jobs but have been reprimanded for "making too much noise in the hallway," touching kids' faces, vandalizing textbooks, and "encouraging dare-devilism." I like that this is more about the kids than it is Robin Williams' character. He's the instigator or catalyst, but Peter Weir wisely focuses more on the boys and this moment when they're ready to challenge authority and have their own ideas. The boys' performances seem authentic to me, a guy who did not attend a fancy-schmanzy prep school in the late-50s, and the adult antagonists--Norman Lloyd as Nolan and Kurtwood Smith as Neil's dad Mr. Perry--are also really good. This isn't as consistently great as Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris but it's still a really good movie.

The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy

2009 documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A guy takes some water, some writing material, a few books, a piece of plastic to use for a tent, and a desire to die into the woods. He eats nothing for a few months and dies. A trucker stops to take a piss in the woods and discovers his body. No, maybe that was the Lindbergh baby.

You know what this is? It's a really good book-on-tape. It's not a great documentary, especially visually as it's just a random series of images to accompany the guy's diary. The images, like a half-assed collage, grew a little pretentious, and you can wait for them to develop and add up to something insightful but they never really do. Still, the text is so gripping that the experience is worth it. I do wonder how we're supposed to think about this guy, however. I imagine a lot of readers (or viewers or, listening to my recommendation, just listeners) are going to see this as some act of courage, and I don't think that's fair to either insects or mummies. The insight and honesty of the starving man was fascinating to me though. There are these moments in the writing where he knows it's his last chance to back out of the plan, and that there isn't much of a conflict between his desire to die and a human being's natural will to live is really depressing.

By the way, it should be noted that I enjoyed a bowl of clam chowder while watching this movie. Chased it down with a large portion of banana pudding.

The Devil, Probably

The feel-good film of 1977

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Details the final three months of existential angst as fatally disillusioned Charles tries his best to feel something in a world he despises. His pals try to show him pictures of baby seals being clubbed to death to make him feel better about the world he's not sure he wants to be a part of, but he decides to kill himself anyway. The end.

Geez. This wasn't just depressing; it was profoundly depressing. Being thematically depressing is usually enough, but this is stylistically depressing as well. As I've learned to expect with Bresson, I didn't quite grasp everything after one viewing. This is thickly symbolic. Like with Pickpocket, we've got lots of open and closed doors, and I think there's something going on with transportation. The way the characters are displayed on screen is very odd, lots of characters shown walking slowly from the neck or even waist down for extended periods of time. The camera sometimes lingers on, well, seemingly nothing at all a lot of times. At first I thought it was the product of a director who's apparently lost his mind, but I think there was something deeper going on there, too. The narrative feels incomplete, drained of anything that feels vital, and the emotionally detached acting makes it difficult to connect to the characters. The actors seem completely bored with their roles. But am I allowed to say "in a good way" following that? I really think Bresson's refusal to allow the audience to emotionally invest in anything actually helps what's going on in the protagonist's head to go on in the viewer's head. By the time one of the final scenes (involving classical music and a television) comes along, you're about ready to lose faith yourself and off yourself right along with Charles. That's a great scene. So is the final scene, a scene on a bus when the title is spoken by a guy who barely gets his name in the credits, and a conversation with a psychologist. This isn't the most fun movie I'll watch this year, and there's absolutely nothing that will dazzle you about Le Diable Probablement. It's difficult and heavy stuff, but I'm really glad I saw it.

A Winter Rates recommendation.