Author: Max Mayo

Week in Review: March 12th – 18th, 2018

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D’Annunzio’s Cave – Another Heinz Emigholz architecture film, this time about the home of Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio. I was unfamiliar with the man, or his celebrated novels, but it seems his political ideas may have influenced the eventual spread of Italian fascism. For this fact, or for the ghastly interior decorating, Emigholz directs this space as a horror film. As the camera does its usual Emigholz tessellations, an experimental discordant score by David Byrne and Brian Eno puts one in a perpetual state of unease. The rooms of the house are uniquely dark, jarring, over-stuffed, lacking any recognizable or appealing style. It feels like the home of a serial killer.

Koyannisqatsi ft. The Philip Glass Ensemble – Philip Glass was back again, again with friends! This night was a screening of Godfrey Reggio’s city-symphony classic, Koyannisqatsi, with Glass’s original score played live by him and his Ensemble. The Washington Chorus was also there to help. The performance was shaky during the slower nature sequences, but the stage found its groove mid film in time for the rapturous climax. The film remains as relevent today as it was in 1983, and we are still catching up with Ron Fricke’s cinematography.

Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez’s surprising and delightful, if bittersweet novel about the power and importance of impassioned love at any age. Stylistically, Márquez abandons the literal magic here, and instead refines his near mystical talent to twist his characters in new directions throughout their lifetimes. The majority of the pages are devoted to several of the steamy 622 love affairs of our hero, Florentino Ariza, as he bides his time, waiting over 50 years for another chance at his first love, Fermina Daza. By the end, you have felt the draining strain of time on Florentino and Fermina as they approach Death’s door-step, but even stronger, you feel these character’s natural will to revivify a type of passion most only get to feel once in a lifetime. That this may be self-delusion is irrelevant to Márquez. The magnetic strength of this urge inspires him, and the reader, above all.

A Brighter Summer Day – Edward Yang’s 1991 epic four-hour coming of age story is a lush time capsule into early 1960’s Taipei. Yang’s primal filmic theme is the erosion of filial piety and A Brighter Summer Day may be his deepest exploration of this process. His narrative strategy this time involves rhyming disparate threads utilizing similar motifs – illumination vs darkness, architectural framing, pop cultural fixations – to layer his multiple story threads. For me, this is the pivot point for Yang’s output, an integral piece of the puzzle in how he moves from the outright fatalism of Taipei Story to the broad humanism of Yi Yi.

Saturday Night Live – This week’s episode with host Bill Hader hit a lower mark than the Sterling K. Brown episode, but there continued to be sketches that were pushing the show’s normal absurdity boundaries. One featured Cecily Strong sitting on her geriatric husband (Hader) in an electric wheelchair during a game night with her girlfriends. His Cialis has just kicked in and they have a limited timeframe to take advantage. In response to the consternation of her friends sitting across the table, Strong pleas, “Its no different than breastfeeding!” A second brilliant skit was a fake ad for an office lamp toilet that you can keep on your desk. Beck Bennett, the office worker who becomes addicted to the lamps, is second only to Kate McKinnon as the most consistently funny and versatile players in this cast.

Plants – I’m told that Chilean film is on the up and up, and was excited to see this 2015 effort by Roberto Doveris. It’s an atmospheric sexual awakening tale about a young girl named Flor who’s family unit is in the midst of decay. Her brother is in a coma (one of the titular plants) and her mother is in the hospital with a terminal illness. The father is out of the picture. Flor spends her free time going to comic conventions, preparing dance choreography with her friends, and naively messaging guys on chatroulette. Real life chat windows, plant life and comic book drawings feature sporadically in the frame as Flor sexual urges lead her into some dangerous encounters. Ultimately, this movie feels like a stew of visual ideas that never congealed. Pablo Larraín remains the face of this emerging cinema, but Doveris could be a director to watch, especially with a more cogent script.

Week in Review: March 5th – 11th, 2018

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Untitled – A travel documentary comprised of footage shot by documentarian Michael Glawogger as he traveled for months through Eastern Europe and down into Western Africa. Glawogger contracted malaria and died in Liberia during filming, so the resulting film is a compilation of his footage in accordance with his notes and instructions. At its best, his footage captures ways of living totally foreign to a Western viewer that in collage raises questions about animal cruelty, child labor and garbage (yes, garbage). Overall, this is a passion project that will mean more to Glawogger’s family and friends than to a wider audience.

National Museum of African American History & Culture – Conceptually this museum is quite brilliant. After entering this museum you actually begin your journey by taking an escalator and then an elevator deep underground the National Mall. Down there you will work your way up through centuries of painful history, emerging hours later in present day. These history levels are text heavy and avoid sensation in most instances. However, I was emotionally exhausted by the end; the mere facts of this history are enough to overwhelm. After the history levels, you get to explore the cultural floors above, covering music, theater, visual arts, sports, and more, thus completing the metaphor: the history is the foundation to a rich culture and a stunning structure that will now be a fixture in this country’s ongoing dialogue.

Philip Glass 20 Etudes: A 5-Pianist Performance – MINIMALIST classical music composer Philip Glass came to the Kennedy Center and he brought friends! In the house were jazz maestros Jason Moran and Aaron Diehl, Devonté Hynes (aka Blood Orange) and concert pianist Jenny Lin. The performers were given four of Glass’s 20 piano Etudes a piece to be performed in order, though Hynes ended up ceding (or losing) his second two to others. The Etudes are, well, studies of register and tempo on a sole piano that share melodic structures that mutate through the whole set. For this performance, the constantly rotating performers were part of the study, each bringing a part of their personality to the music. As exciting as this was, I would have preferred to have Lin, the most talented pianist, play all 20.

City of Sadness – This is an early Hou Hsiao-Hsien film from 1988 that follows the gradual ruin of four brothers, each falling into the chaotic power vacuum of post-WWII Taiwan. The movie depicts how the remaining Japanese cultural presence, the distant civil war on the mainland, and the lack of stable local governance will sow the seeds for a future Taiwanese nationalist identity built upon estrangement and despair. Hou’s signature long takes are effective at staring at a past that had previously been avoided in Taiwanese film, though his greatest aesthetic achievements appear in later films.

National Portrait Gallery: America’s Presidents – This permanent exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, which reopened after renovations this past Fall, was given an attendance boost with the additions of the new President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama portraits by artists Kenhilde Wiley and Amy Sherald, respectively. Both paintings are spectacular in person. The vibrant greens and blues of the flora engulfing the President are magnetic and you find yourself getting lost in them. Similarly, the enigmatic face of the former First Lady beckons you towards the somber blue void surrounding her. These two paintings conjure not just the images but meditations on their respective subjects. Equally as exciting were the large crowds. People of all ages and races were gathered around them in a palpable awe, in most instances making it impossible to see the full pictures.

Tamayo: The New York Years – The best paintings at this Rufino Tamayo retrospective exhibit at the SAAM (Smithsonian American Art Museum) are four WWII-era works depicting dogs, a horse and a lion in variations of a rabid trance amongst post-apocalyptic backgrounds. Tamayo was a Mexican modernist painter who incorporated cubism, pre-Colombian imagery and expressionistic color fields to achieve his singular look. In Tamayo’s time in New York City, those elements never worked better together than when evoking the primal, hellish circumstances of the world circa 1943 through animalist symbols.

David Finckel & Wu Han – Hosted by The Phillips Collection, David Finckel (cellist) and Wu Han (pianist) were in town to perform a two-hour cello-piano set for a majority geriatric crowd. Having been oblivious to the duo, I was pleased to learn that in addition to being supremely talented they are also an adorable married couple. The set was highlighted by two Felix Mendelssohn pieces, Cello Sonata No. 2 in D Major & Lied ohne Worte (Song without Words) in D Major, and Edvard Greig’s Cello Sonata in A minor. The latter was a beautiful bipolar blast from Scandinavia that best illustrated to me the ways in which a duet can play notes for each other, filling in spaces to help one another transcend their forms.

Saturday Night Live – This episode ended with a skit featuring host Sterling K. Brown visiting a family’s mother on her death-bed. Her last words as she fades in an out of consciousness turn out to be the lyrics to Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me.” Before you know it, Brown is performing the song with music backing, the children and paramedics dancing as they defibrillate the mother, “CLEAR!” It was totally unhinged and sadistic, and it capped the most madcap episode I’ve seen in years. My apathy for this show has turned to curiosity.

Week in Review: February 26th – March 4th, 2018

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Sampha: Process – A Malick-like collage of performances set in urban London, the beaches of Sierra Leone and in a giant empty diving pool, among others. It amounts to an experimental album film, consisting of no linear plot or dialogue (or full songs for that matter), but one gets a vague sense of Sampha’s background and concerns around his mixed global identity.

Sullivan’s Banks – Another short collage, this one about eight banks designed by American architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924). Heinz Emigholz directs the structures one at a time by simply placing the camera at various angles for observation. Shot in the 1990’s, each analysis begins with a few elliptical master shots where you can see how each building blends in to a small town square. Only when the camera moves closer do you begin to see their quiet radicalism and idiosyncratic nature. Sullivan was a fan of ornament and the density of details and materials on these banks absorb you as the camera tessellates around them. While the film offers no opinion per se, if there is an argument being made it is that Sullivan was a modernist and a visionary that American architecture stopped following.

Maillart’s Bridges – This is another Emigholz short film that is part of his Architecture as Autobiography docu-series. It examines 14 structures, primarily bridges, designed and built by Swiss engineer Robert Maillert (1872-1940) early in the 20th century. Maillert was notable for his creative use of reinforced concrete to minimize material usage and structural footprint. Emigholz’s camera replicates the approach to Sullivan’s banks, with one caveat: as the camera pivots around the sturcutres we almost never see their functional tops. Instead, Emigholz is fascinated with looking at the bridges the way Maillert may have, admiring and exploring the visual play of curves and lines amongst the Swiss Alps’ landscape.

Blind Spot – Teju Cole is one of my favorite creative minds and his first photobook does not disappoint. As he notes within the text, the book represents the 4th segment in a tetralogy about looking. A photography project shouldn’t come as a surprise though. Cole’s penchant for flaneuring in his literary works helps elucidate the formal continuity between the four projects. The photographs, representing over a decade of international travels, are often stunning but he lets none of them speak for themselves. Each image is coupled with a piece of text on the opposite page that contains a reaction to his prolonged exposure to his picture. The pairs are organized thematically and they elliptically build out a continuous stream of thought around his philosophical, aesthetic and political ideas. With this photobook, one looks at Teju Cole looking at what he was looking at.

Chef’s Table – It’s hard not to chuckle at the self-serious formula at this point, which is unfortunate because the chefs are still anything but formulaic. I watched Season 3, Episode 6 about chef Virgilio Martínez of Central based in Lima, who’s ecosystem inspired dishes are fascinating. He and his team scavenge around Peru for hundreds of unique ingredients used nowhere else in the world, and then combine them in groupings based on elevation. Apparently some of the dishes aren’t even designed to taste good.

Solaris – Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1973 three hour Russian science fiction classic. This was a re-watch as part of my Annihilation post-mortum and I can confirm that it still holds up. The film is much broader than I recalled, though I think its possible to read the film as Tarkovsky’s personal crisis over the then obvious shortcomings of the Soviet experiment. A telling 5 minute sequence set in a futuristic Moscow is merely a drive around the multi-tiered infrastructure and booming skylines of Tokyo.

Taipei Story

The 90th Academy Awards – I watch the Oscars every year for shallow reasons that I can’t quite reckon with. It is almost always the same: a drab four hour affair punctuated by a few funny presenting bits and the ensuing consensus of whether or not the host was any good. This year I was pleased by the #MeToo tone of the evening and Jimmy Kimmel’s general presence, but there just weren’t any surprises in this stagnating event. I uncharacteristically did not make a prediction list, but I didn’t need one. All most all of the wins were predictable. The one spark was when Kimmel took a caravan of stars over to a local movie theater, interrupting an ongoing film’s audience with candy baskets and hot-dog canons. The bit ran too long, and it honestly looked like chaos, but it contained the potential for disaster and thus was exhilarating. If the Academy really wants to expand the broadcast audience, they need more uncertainty.

Taipei Story

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This 1985 film depicts the turmoil of two middle class Taiwanese twentysomethings at the margins of Taiwan’s 1980s deindustrialization and diaspora. The rapid socio-economic changes over the previous 20 years have made the country prosperous but have hollowed out its identity. Traditional values are being supplanted by materialism and a once patriarchal society is transitioning to one where business connections determine power.

Lung and Chin’s disaffected relationship at the center of the film works as a synecdoche for each of these changes. Lung and Chin (Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Chin) were once high school sweethearts who had planned to get married and embark on a successful life together. As they are confronted by the realities of the modern economy, indecision and misfortune cools the romance irreparably. At the start of the film, Lung returns from L.A. in a deep solitude after seeing his dim career prospects abroad. He returns to a depressed Chin, herself struck by misfortune after her boss and mentor sells her company, thus derailing Chin’s career. Lung and Chin spend the majority of the film wandering aimlessly through the metropolis of Taipei.

Director Edward Yang and his creative team present this alienation with a potent fatalism. To reject the change in society is to be erased; to embrace the change is to relinquish who you are. Such is the fate of Lung and Chin.

There is an almost punk-rock frustration latent in the dichotomy Yang and Co. have set up. The film is stylish and cool, but in its self-absorption it fails to see any sort of middle path towards the future. Having seen the wider humanism and hopefulness Yang emits in his later masterwork, Yi Yi (2000), it appears Yang will develop out of this mentality.

Nevertheless, this film is a valuable snapshot of the anxieties of the time and the sophisticated cinematography anticipates Yang’s later achievements. Yang’s prowess at utilizing space and glass to convey emotional states is particularly impressive.

Week in Review: February 19th – 25th, 2018

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Spielberg – HBO documentary that is too long and too vapid. Its best on his early work and the commentary by Lucas, Scorsese, Coppola, and de Palma during that period is entertaining. There’s a good documentary waiting to be made on that group. The main insight I gleamed is how little prep he likes to have on set, preferring to put himself into positions of uncertainty.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – This is epic. There will be more on Marquez in the coming weeks. He has an incredible ability to tell you what is going to happen and then completely usurp your expectations of how you get there by growing a character or a relationship in an unexpected direction. The complete Buendía family tree at the beginning of the book is an apt metaphor for Marquez’s approach. Ultimately quite pessimistic.

Black Panther – As refreshing and exciting as it is to see this pan-African created Marvel film, it is still at the end of the day a Marvel film. I’d rank it near the top of the pile.

National Symphony Orchestra: Brahms’ First Symphony

My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman – Normally my cynicism would devour a show so hagiographic about its guests; but, there is a certain boldness in a talk show blatantly choosing such an approach with a highly curated guest list. As if to say, “These guests actually deserve attention. Now let me tell you why.” The first episode with President Barack Obama succeeded, properly placing him in context of the civil rights struggle. This month’s George Clooney episode doesn’t nearly reach the same heights, though I was surprised to learn about Clooney’s humanitarian exploits and his breadth of knowledge in general.

Annihilation

The Joel McHale Show – (with Joel McHale). Fans of The Soup rejoice, its back on Netflix. Once McHale builds up steam, usually around midway through an episode, a certain delirium sets in with the studio audience that is contagious to the home viewer.

Illumination – Polish film from 1973 directed by Krzysztof Zanussi. It follows a young Polish man from the moment he’s admitted to college for Physics to the age of 30 when he is married, has a child and has just completed a PhD. Zanussi utilizes an unusually high shot count (~every 5 seconds) with each conveying slivers of the immense intellectual and emotional development that goes on during this time period. The film is ostensibly about the horrors of having to make these long-term decisions at such a young age in a rigid Communist satellite bureaucracy; but in todays Western context I find this is a relevent concern. More on Zanussi in the coming weeks.

Bob le flambeur