Three Refracted Visions

REPORT FROM CHINA I wan ami Productions Tokyo TAKING OFF Universal directed by Milos Forman WALKABOUT 20th Century JFox directed by Nicholas Roeg

Go ahead, bite: what do these three films have in common? Well, actually very little except on the level of their refracted vision, and even there the connection is tenuous. But let’s not quibble so early on or I’ll take off my wig and leave you with Rex Reed.

Taking Off is a stoty about a well known sorry and sliding society with no choice but to poke fun at itself. Report From China would give us just the oppositer a look at a new,, proud, and optimistic society. Walkabout (the first Australian production I can remember seeing) puts them both in perspective by giving us a glimmer of the idyllic yet anachronistic present of the Australian Outback, which either of the other alternatives must destroy.

Taking Off is the most ambitious and successful of the three. It’s a witty and pointed yarn concocted under the observant eye of Czech director Milos Forman (Loves of a Blond and Fireman’s Ball). As a foreigner his ability to assimilate and radiate so acutely Hie quality of American social absurdity testifies both to his vision and our obviousness.

In brief, Taking Off is about a suburban class couple (well played by Lynn Carlin and Buck Henry. You remember her from Faces and him as a screen writer — The Graduate — and guest host for Cavett last year) whose 15 year old daughter runs away. By chance they become members of the Society for Parents of Fugitive Children, an organization of comfortably bored, middle-age adults who are as hungry to “be with if" as they are to find their children.

In one truly classic scene the members — attempting with no little irony to understand their offspring — are introduced to killer weed by a tall, mishapen, fuzzy headed, bespectacled New York mental patient. Straight faced and technician like he carefully explains the ritual: Hold the ‘joint’ between your thumb and forefinger; inhale deeply and curl your lips so as to get lots of oxygen; hold the smoke as long as possible, and exhale through your hose; don’t bogart the joint as it is very rude.' They all get ridiculously loaded.

Later, at home with some friends from the society, the parents let down their libidos and get into a fast game of Texas one card showdown. Naturally then, who should emerge from her bedroom just as dad, naked as a loon, has mounted the card table to the accompaniment of hysterical giggling? That’s right. After a very long and embarrassed pause for clothes and good-byes, dad looks at mom and says, “Don’t you think we ought to talk to her?” .

Returned to liberal reality they coerce their daughterinto inviting the boy “she’s, been with” home for dinner. He’s worse than they feared. Hairy as a stereotype and a rock musician to boot. When dad asks how much money he made last year, the freak says $290,000, and nobody knows if he’s for real. Taking Off fades out with dad standing by the piano belting out “Stranger in Paradise”.

The strength of Forman’s film is that his point is both accurate and easy to swallow. And thus it’s easily criticised — for the very reason that we live in the bowels of the beast. Less easily discussed but also, 1 suspect, less accurate .is Report From China. Made in 1966-67 during the height of the Cultural Revolution, it purports to be an honest look at the New China.

What it shows is *a land of overwhelming optimism where Mao’s familial visage is everywhere — even Stuck , to the front of trains where each day at dawn smiling peasants go together to the fields to sing as they work, where people stand in -20 degree temperatures to read wall posters; where 300,000 people gather in frighteningly precise formations to venerate the Leader; where nothing — not even dog shit — is wasted; and where cleanliness is next to Maoliness.

Report From China unfortunately for those of us who are really interested in. learning from China as a model, comes off as little more than a propaganda film.

For example, whenever Red Guards come on view they invariably look like well scrubbed scouts on a jamboree instead of Mao’s angry children revolutionaries. One group of youngsters, turned out from school, undertakes to duplicate the Long March. The narrator makes much of the fact that these junior woodchucks are provided a comfortable resting place every ten miles, and that at least once a day they can get a hot meal for four cents. Nowhere are Red Guards portrayed in struggle.

Most of the filming was done in North Eastern China, land reclaimed from the Japanese puppet state of Manchsukuo and now important both for industry and agriculture. Here too, everyone smiles and pitches in con gusto to make a reality of the mass line. Certainly, the Japanese film crew wasn’t free to film freely, but the result leaves many questions untouched.

Such as, the. very nature of the Cultural Revolution and the violence it unleased. For surely there was violence and not all of it directed solely at the bourgeois revisionist clique headed by Lio Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-peng. In part the upheaval stemmed from pent up peasant frustrations caused by the immense dislocations of collectivization arid anger at various political, social; and economic errors of high ranking decision makers. By giving his blessing to the movement, Mao simply pre-empted and channeled its poweri

So the Cultural Revolution can be seen in iriany lights; 1) as a next step in Mao’s vision, 2) as a power struggle between Mao and other top party officials, 3) as a revolt of the provinces against centralized control, and 4) as a shift in emphasis from the party to the army as the paramount institution. Report From, China does little to probe any of these. Still, hungry as we are for any information, half a loaf is better than none.

Walkabout is a different sort of tune altogether. In fact, that’s a didgeree doo you’ll hear rumbling deeply in the opening scenes. Set in the great Outback of Australia, it’s an allegorical fantasy about an English school girl (Jenny Aguter) and her younger brother (Lucien Roeg) who are taken by their father into the bush to be killed. Heaven knows why, unless his grey buildinged, grey suited, grey haired, grey life finally got to him. So he drives them to the middle of nowhere and while the daughter unknowingly sets up their proper picnic, lunch (accompanied by Rod Stewart singing “Gasoline Alley” 1 over the radio) he pulls out a luger and bangs away at them before shooting himself. The girl, English to the core, grabs her brother and off they run further into nowhere. NOwhere.

Dazed later, just as they are about to expire, ouf pops a young Abo (David Gumpilil) ‘complete with a mess of lizards strapped to his |p§f and a swarm of flies. The rest of the film concerns j their long trek back to civilization, and gives the camera man plenty of J opportunity to ply his trade via tcountless weird animals^and insects, the omnivorous sun, and pleasing young bodies.

Especially well done is the relationship of Abo boy and the girl; which builds slowly and . maintains | tension throughout. Is he going to? What will she do? And like that.

In the end they come to a deserted shack on the edge of the white man’sworld. The Abo, who has momentarily disappeared, suddenly shows up all decked out in paint and feathers. He . does a strange dance the girl can’t understand. WJten I saw the film I assumed he was performing a proposal, but David later told me that he was both proposing and saying goodby because he knew he couldn’t compete with the white man’s world. Next morning he is dead; hung by his arms from a tree. The girl and hejr brother shed nottears and hurry on to their city.

The ending is sort , of lame but that’s not important; once out of the bush the story is done. Walkabout succeeds as a visually pleasant little puff of wishful, thinking not any the less because of the girl, Jenny’s, extreme comeliness. But Walkabout’s . importance stems less, really,. from its own modest ambitions, than from its capturing of the primitive grace of David Gampiiil as a symbol of a people forced by time and progress to accept the inevitability of European civilization. Very sadly,only a few seconds are devqted to any other Aborigines when much more footage could easily have been (ncluded. But even so, in David, the movie captures a whole way of life; now as doomed as he was in the film. ’Course it’s well to remember he was no more doomed than . the children’s father^

Jack Hafferkamp

FILM Short Takes

I’ve been busy making a film, and consequently I haven’t gotten around to writing about a number of interesting films. Ideally, I suppose, I ought to get into them at length, but somehow I feel more like doing an annotated list which is what I’m gonna do. This is about three months’ worth of movies.

GLEN AND RANDA. Jim McBride (who directed David Holtzman’s Diary a few years ago) has come up with a feature-length science fiction film that, although flawed, left me with a feeling of beautiful sadness. I think that’s a good thing for a film to do.

McBride is an interesting filmmaker. His grim humor and relentlessly understated style make his films among the most important works by new/young filmmakers. Glen and Randa is one of those fascinating failures that (sometiihes) loom larger in retrospect than they do when you first see them. In any case, there’s a lot happening here. In particular, the characterizations are much deeper than the cardboard heroes and villains we’ve come to expect in sf films (2001 excepted, of course) — in fact they’re probably the strongest thing in the film. Glen and Randa is too long, and too vague, but attention should be paid to McBride. No masterpiece, but see it anyway.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is a low-budget, black and white horror movie made in Pittsburgh. It’s been around for over a year, and you may have seen it already. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for? It’s a killer movie, and it’s really scary!

I can’t remeipber the director’s name (which is inexcusable, so I won’t try to excuse myself), but he’s constructed a beautifully balanced, classically well-made film. I think it’s his first movie, which, if true, is astounding. It’s about dead guys who come to life and start eating people.

Also worth noting, the hero (or anti-hero, maybe) is played by *a black actor, but there’s not one word in the whole movie referring to his blackness. Well, whether or not that break-through impresses you, you’d" better catch Night Of the Living Dead if it comes anywhere near where you'are. Take somebody with you, and leave a light on at home before you split. I’m not kidding.

SPEND IT ALL and A WELL SPENT LIFE. These are two new 16mm films by folklorist /filmmakers Les Blank and Skip Gerson. Their first film was The Blues According to Lightning Hopkins, and it was really fine. The new films are even better.

Spend It All is a 45-minute study of cajuns and cajun music, shot in Louisiana. It features the usual Blank/Ge^son approach: close-up sequences in which people rap to the camera, musical sections (beautifully recorded by Skip), and lyrical, flowing studies of the land that makes the music what it is. A few months ago, Blank went back to show the film to the cajuns who were in it, and got busted for dope. It was a ten to life bust, but when he showed the film to the sheriff (“I kept thinking of Leadbelly the whole time,” says Blank) he got off with a small fine and ten days. Now that’s a review that means something.

A Well Spent Life (also 45 minutes) is a simpler film, and (I think) a better one. It centers on Mance Lipscomb, the great Texas guitarist and blues singer, and if you dig Mance, or want to learn more about where his head is at, this is the film for you.

My only reservation about the film is that Blank’s avoidance of negative material tends to give a misleading picture of a black man’s life in the deep south. Still, the point of the film is Mance, not sociology, and Mance does pretty well for himself these days. Also, even if I would prefer a more “political” film, there’s simply no denying the lyricism and beauty of Blank and Gerson’s vision of the world. “I work on feelings,” says Blank. “I shoot whatever moves me for as long as it moves me.

-Same with editing. Since the source of my feelings is unknown to me, I can’t argue with them. I just follow orders. Pretty fuckin’ irresp9nsible, huh? I guess I’m trying to make films that communicate directly — like music itself. Shit, I don’t know.”

Finally, of course, it comes down to Mance himself — and Mance is just too much. There’s a knife-edge guitar sequence that’s worth the price of admission by itself. If you want to get hold of any of the films, write to Flower Flims, 1412A No. Poinsettia PL, Hollywood, Calif. 90046.

DRIVE HE SAID is the latest Hollywood campus/revolution movie. It’s directed by Jack Nicholson, who’s had some stuff to do with a couple of good movies in the past, but that isn’t enough to save it. There’s one pretty good scene in which Gabriel (a freak) psychs-out of his draft physical, but of course Gabriel cracks .up later in the film to make sure we understand that anyone who psychs-out on his draft physical is really crazy — right?

There’s a lot of clinically observed fucking in the film, serving not the slightest dramatic purpose. It’s supposed to get people into the theater, I guess. Will it get you into the theater? Personally, I’m not much interested in watching Karen Black pretend to come, even though she’s getting fucked from behind so you can watch her face in tight close-up.

There’s nice photography, of course, and a haunting song by Moondog. But it’s not enough. When are they going to quit selling us lies about ourselves?

VLADIMIR AND ROSA is the latest cineMarxist film from Jean-Luc Godard and the Dziga Vertov film collective, and on second viewing I like it a lot more than I did on first viewing. Come to think of it, this has been true of almost all Qodard films over the years — it takes at least two or three shots at it before I can begin to understand what Godard’s up to this time. Is there any reason why the political films of the last two years should be any different? Well yes, there is, actually, but that’s for another article — on political films and Godard' — which will probably appear here soon.

In the meantime, I’d like to note that there’s a lot of important political material in Vladimir and Rosa, even though the focus gets a little fuzzy sometimes. It’s also a tremendously funny, enjoyable movie jg| a good thing for a political film to be. It’s sort of about the Chicago conspiracy trial’ You ought to see it.

NEON PALACE is a fantastic, new feafure-length film by a Canadian filmmaker named Peter Rowe. It doesn’t have a US distributor yet, and Rowe doesn’t think it’s going to get one. Given the brilliance of the film,non-distribution seems incredible. Still, Neon Palace is openly anti-American, and makes its points so strongly (and so entertainingly) that distributors are probably scared of it.

The strangest thing of all about this ; highly political film is that, in reality, it’s a rock and roll movie. This is how Rowe describes the film:

“Weaving in and out of the film is the story of the old folks banning rock and roll in our kids’ home town. Fran cinehofwever, neo-groupie and friend of the great Arnie Feck and his Velvetones, finds the kids an old barn. Off they run, lickety-split it’s as clean as a whistle and festooned with Chinese lanterns, and by the end of the movie we’re just jn time to hear Arnie’s final number.

“As the ponytails bob and the white bucks flash, life in America goes on. Halfway through the shooting of the film Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard enjoyed a bit of a revival; it wasn’t half the revival that Richard Nixon, THE KING OF THE FIFTIES, had seen in,1968.”

Neon Palace was originally called A Fifties Trip/A Sixties Trip, and I like the earlier title better it suggests a bit of the dialectic that the film is based on. Oh yes, the film actually includes an interview with the real Mr. Zig-Zag, in which he is asked THE question of the 70’s: does he know that his papers are used almost exclusively for roiling dope?

For the answer, you’ll have to see Neon Palace, and probably the only way you’re gonna see it .is to go to Canada. Unless (by chance) you’re a distributor yourself — in which case get the fuck on the phone, or write FilmCanada Presentations, 1 Charles Street E., Toronto 5, Canada. Neon Palace has got to be released.

STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND. John Ford made it in the 30’s. I was washing the dishes when someone yelled that there was a John Ford steamboat racing movie on the tube, so I cursed and ran in to watch what was left of it. Which was about half.

Review of the last half: Whew! Will Rogers plays a steamboat captain racing to Baton Rouge with the evidence to save his nephew from being hanged. There’s a steamboat race going on at the s^me time, so naturally ... Then Rogers picks up this madman Mississippi revivalist preacher, the New Moses, who jumps down into the engine room t6 help shovel fuel into the furnace. “Hallelujah!” yells the New Moses as he tosses wood Into the flames.

Of course they run out of fuel just short of the finish line, (and there’s another boat ahead of them) so Will Rogers sacrifices his stash of drinking whiskey (about 200 stone crocks of booze) and they toss it into the furnace, where the crocks explode. Now the New Moses is really into it: “Down with demon rum!” he yells, tossing crocks into. the flames as fast as he can. “Hallelujah! Into the fiery furnace!” BOOM! goes the furnace. “Great God almighty! ” yells the New Moses, reaching for another crock.

The othgr thing about the movie is the steamboat whistles — joyous, brash, constantly hooting — whistles up and down the river. They never stop, serving as a beautiful counterpoint to the low comedy and breakneck excitement of the plot. Needless to say, Will Rogers catches the other boat, wins the race and saves his nephew in the last 30 seconds. I tell ya, they just don’t make ’em like that any more. I can’t wait to see the first half.

by

Michael Goodwin