Frezno's Criterion Challenge: August 2023 Trip Report

Holy hell, with this installment of the Criterion Challenge, I've crossed the 2/3rds mark. 8 months of this. Absolutely wild. I have enjoyed myself so far, and hope I will continue to enjoy myself. Certainly, I have some enjoyable films to talk about here, and so I will do that right about now. Honestly, it's hard to bullshit enough to get an opening paragraph before talking about these, but... actually, I lied, it's really easy to bullshit enough words to get a paragraph filled. I'm literally doing it right now, and now I pretty much have enough. It's the oldest trick in the rambling raving rants book, and now that the trick is done... Kino.

30. Solaris (1972, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)

The category for this film was "Films To Fall Asleep To", and here's my honesty: I did. I did kind of drift off for a bit there at the 45 minute mark, and it's kind of fitting because this is the transitional moment between Earth and Solaris in the film. More than appropriate that it happened while I was on the boundary between waking and sleeping. I don't admit that as a gotcha to the film, a way of saying "IT WAS SO FUCKING BORING THAT I FELL ASLEEP!!!". On the contrary, it was a soothing and low-key relaxing film and that's why it lulled me into that sleepiness. That is not to say that I did not pay attention to what was going on in the movie, though, because there's a lot going on here.

This is a sci-fi film with heavy themes of transhumanism, dreams, and memory. The sheer power of Solaris reconstructs our main character's dead lover from his memory of her, and the rest of the movie is about dealing with that sudden reappearance, of wondering if the memory is herself real, of delving more and more into the ethical and spiritual ramifications of this. It does all this with absolutely luxurious pace, and there's something rapturous about the film's simultaneous simplicity and complexity. Just absolutely immaculate vibes all around. God damn. What a film. I don't have much more to say, because the vibes are the film. It is something that has to be experienced, relaxed with. Maybe even fallen asleep to. Go do that, and then you can understand part of what I experienced on Solaris.

31. Two Days, One Night (2014, dir. Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)

A more down-to-earth picture next. A film about mental health and the capitalist hellworld we currently live in, but one which doesn't feel the need to yell about it out loud. It's understated and muted, and it says everything it needs to say by just following its main character around for two days and one night of her stressful life. Marion Cotillard's Sandra is going to lose her job because the bosses can't afford to both keep her on and give the other employees their bonus, and so she spends two days and one night going around asking them to consider voting against their own self-interests to keep her on.

It's real and raw in a very human way, this poor girl struggling with depression and anxiety reduced to begging her coworkers to sacrifice their own stability for her stability. Many of them are sympathetic, some even agreeing to vote in her favor. Others understand her plight, but are struggling themselves and really need the money. Still others are hostile towards her for daring to ask. The real enemies of the film are the shitty manager who has been turning the workers against her for being mentally ill. The management for being unable to work out a way where nobody has to fall on the sword for everyone else. The entire capitalist system for forcing this woman to spend her weekend off begging others for her livelihood.

It's a very strong and grounded film that, again, makes me ever militant in my anti-capitalist stance without having to yell about it. Just 90 minutes of empathy for a French woman struggling to keep her head above water. That should be all it takes to radicalize you against this shit, and it makes for a damn fine film as well.

32. Ghost In The Shell (1995, dir. Mamoru Oshii)

Anime?!? Holy fuck! Okay, so it's not exactly broadening my horizons of cinema and is in fact something I would usually watch on my own time. I can have a little treat now and then, and what a treat this is. Kind of like Solaris, it's a film that I was a little sleepy for but still got a lot out of. It's a stunning cyberpunk world painted by this film, and it has those same slow luxurious flourishes of the film's pace stopping to smell the metaphorical roses. By doing that, it makes you slow down and appreciate them too, and there is a lot to appreciate in this film. 

The pace is absolutely expertly managed. The film can jump between those slow luxurious flourishes and fast furious frenetic gunplay on a dime, and does so incredibly well. Like Solaris, the film deals with the ideas of memory and identity and transhumanism. It's also a touchstone for many a cyberpunk film, and I would name quite a few if we weren't under a strike but one look at this shit and you can tell what it would go on to inspire. At 80 minutes it's lean and tight, which makes that slowing down all the more impressive. It's definitely worth your time, as it was worth mine. I don't need to stretch these out, so let's move on to something else and acknowledge that this was one hell of a good anime film.

33. In The Mood For Love (2000, dir. Wong Kar-wai)

This, on the other hand, was something special. I don't know what I expected diving into this, but it was certainly an experience. First of all, the color and cinematography of this film are something else. The thing is awash in this green tone that really stands out, and Criterion has an alternate version up which presumably is shot normally. I'm sure there are artistic merits to presenting that, and it's good that one has the choice... but give me the strange green version every time. It adds a vibe to the film that I can't quite explain, but that I really like. 

As for the film itself, it's a tragic heartbreaker of a love story, in a sense. In a way, its notion of love is how I see relationships and good things in my life. There's no switch that happens, no real moment of "I love you". It just sort of happens to our male protagonist, who wakes up one day and realizes he is in love. It's rather like enlightenment: you find it without looking for it. That being said, things do not go so well for him. Time passes, and this is a story of tragic heartbreak so there's no real happy ending. Years go by, the people who were connected drift apart, and there's a poignant final caption about the past looking blurred through the window pane of history that really touched and moved me. It reminded me of what I wrote about 2005 a while ago, a time long gone that has eroded into dust. A tragic tale of loss and heartbreak, but one that moved me.

And that ends 2/3rds of the Criterion Challenge. Fall might become a bit of a hard mode and I may have to accelerate my watching here, but I'm up for the challenge. See you in a month.