The New York Premiere run of Albert Serra's Birdsong starts tonight at Anthology Film Archives with Serra in person to introduce and discuss his quiet little gem of a film. It's a hard sell, of course, as its a slow observational film about a Biblical myth/legend, but like Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, it's a deadpan "comedy" in a way, too, if you let it. I wrote about the picture for The Auteurs' Notebook. Here's my first graf:
Aleatory and teleonomic, Birdsong bears a somewhat familiar resemblance to the Straub-Huillet school of adaptation and philosophy; however, Albert Serra plays a game of improvisation that branches this genealogy into a new space of chance. The document begat by duration here turns presence into an opportunity for digression, for leaps, for a poetic sense of contiguity and not continuity. The whole sums chunks arrayed, not morsels lined. One can sense the film was made on the fly, assembled into its form through smarts and luck. And it's silent, mostly. Save one piece of music, the soundtrack is an assemblage of sand and wind and broken branches, of waves, of inconsequent dialogue mumbled, of the world's little noises blown big.
[Many blogs feature review roundups, or use a Friday post to highlight a current release, so this feature is always already redundant. However, we trust, as we push forward, we'll make our way to set ourselves apart from the likes of David Hudson and Aaron Hillis and any other number of committed blogger-critics out in this internetland. Thus, our first installment, an appropriately late entry hitting the web not Thursday or Friday but on Valentine's Day (another genius marketing ploy), as the film is, ostensibly, about "love" or some such nonsense. Also, I haven't seen the film yet.]
Although available on demand since January 16th, James Gray's Two Lovers opened theatrically on Friday in New York City and Los Angeles. Lucky for this little film, Jaoquin Phoenix has a little act going where he says he's quit acting in favor of a career in hip-hop music. Thursday night, he appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman. It was an instant classic appearance, and had nothing to do with this film, and its noteriety will only help the little PR machine that could behind this modest feature—a film that, from an outsider's eye, looks lovely but (terrifically) out of synch with the current landscape of American Film. For one, it's clearly a straight-forward melodrama. This is apparent in the trailer (see below), despite a few marketing ploys to amp up the Manhattan scenes, and, as Hoberman derides the picture, is consistent with Gray's previous films. Those prior efforts, however, were not romance yarns; rather, all three (just three! in 13 years!) are crime-related tailspins. I did not care for 2007's We Own The Night that much, but it is nothing if not consistent and it definitely had its supporters, like, say, my blogging buddy Zach Campbell (who drops notebook knowledge at Elusive Lucidity) and Dan Callahan at Slant Magazine. And, yes, Callhan has written a fine essay in favor of this new film, again at Slant. His was the first review I read, and it spurred me on to read a number of others, which I hope you do look at as well. I've listed them below in the order I read them in, not in some hierarchy of importance. All of that, coupled with the elegant looking trailer, makes me definitely hope I can see this film sooner rather than later and, if I find the time, revisit his earlier efforts. If there's any benefit to Gray's short-list filmography it's that one may easily digest it in a week. In any case, we hope you enjoy these links, and maybe this film. If you have any thoughts, please do share them.
— Both Glenn Kenny and Karina Longworth saw the film at Cannes and reworked what they wrote then for our reading now. Both are well worth a look.
— Daniel Kasman caught the picture at Cannes as well and has reposted his review at The Auteurs' Notebook alongside a new notice from David Phelps.
— I've already linked to Hoberman's review above but here's another since I like him so much.
— Finally, an "old hat" guy whose new blog career continues to aid the internet's rep as a valuable and interesting forum for criticism (that takes a fun spin on a print "mindset" at that), Salon's Andrew O'Hehir.
Art+Culture is in private beta at this time. However, we are looking to expand our internet horizons with this new daily film blog and select invitations to our friends, old and new, from all the arts and not just film. We hope you join us and have some fun with us and our tasty tool set.
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