A collection of short films by Jay Rosenblatt. Directed by Jay Rosenblatt.
(Unrated. 85 minutes. At the Roxie Cinema.)
Jay Rosenblatt makes short, pointed, poetic films, and to see a
collection of his work is to know he’s a major artist. His specialness has no
single source. He’s a master at matching music and image, and the nature of his
work, which usually involves discovering and using found footage, requires
profound patience. Yet mostly, I suspect, what makes almost every Jay
Rosenblatt film a full emotional experience is his empathy, his deep, unfeigned
and unmistakable respect for life in its many forms.
“Matters of Life and Death: Recent Films by Jay Rosenblatt,” is an
85-minute collection of the recent work of this San Francisco filmmaker, all of
it dealing, in some way, with essential matters of existence. It opens today at
the Roxie, where it will run a week, and then a week from today it opens at the
Rafael Film Center. It’s no exaggeration to say that Rosenblatt can give you
more in one minute than some filmmakers can give you in two hours. “Nine
Lives,” which imagines and depicts his cat’s dreams through brilliantly edited
stock footage, shows what a first-rate talent can do in just 60 seconds.
In his most characteristic mode, Rosenblatt takes a subject and explores
it by combining music with old footage, much of it from training films,
newsreels, industrials and public service films. Through these means, he
synthesizes a complexity of meaning and an emotional power that’s often
astonishing. The fact that much of the footage is old (most from midcentury)
creates a sense of timeless truth and loss, a mood difficult to evoke in film
but sometimes achievable in music, as in Gorecki’s Third Symphony. His short
film, “Worms,” about a boy’s recollection of it raining worms, has that lonely,
aching quality. So does “Friend Good,” which intersperses moments from
“Frankenstein” with quotes from Mary Shelley’s novel.
In “Phantom Limb,” a 28-minute tour de force, he rolls out a succession of
techniques to tell the story of his younger brother’s death, at 7 years old.
The film is a beautiful and original exploration of grief and loss.
The new collection also contains several “video diary” films, in which no
stock footage is used. “A Pregnant Moment” details his dog’s pregnancy and
birthing and the raising and adoption of her puppies. It’s a sweet film, with
many good shots of the dogs being born and nursing, but in a way, the
much-shorter “Nine Lives” is more satisfying, in that the cat film concentrates
on the cat, while “A Pregnant Moment” focuses as much on the humans. When
Rosenblatt eschews his familiar approach for the video diary, he risks forgoing
poetry for prose, and two of his films featuring his daughter, one about a trip
to get ice cream and another about dressing up for Halloween, are more in the
nature of home movies.
Yet his earliest daughter film, “I Used to Be a Filmmaker,” is a
highlight, a series of small, funny and touching vignettes that cover the
seemingly miraculous development of a child from early infancy through her
first steps. It’s lovely, one of the wittiest and most heartfelt films about
fatherhood I’ve seen.
– Advisory: This film contains strong language and adult subject matter.
– Mick LaSalle
‘The Passenger’
Drama. Starring
Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. (Rated
PG-13. 119 minutes. At the Lumiere.)
Michelangelo Antonioni’s “The Passenger” is more than the re-release of a
great film — it’s a rare chance to see a major cinematic work, perhaps more
than once, on the big screen.
Made in 1975, it stars Jack Nicholson as a TV news reporter who switches
identities with a dead man who turns out to be a gunrunner for an African rebel
group.
Antonioni, who established his own identity with landmark films such as
“L’Avventura,” “L’Eclisse” and “Blow-Up” in the 1960s, returned to form in “The
Passenger.” The director’s familiar themes — alienation and identity set
against a harsh mixture of desolate rural landscapes and cramped city
architecture — and one of Nicholson’s classic ’70s performances are honed to
perfection and capped in a bravura seven-minute closing sequence, done in one
shot.
Nicholson plays David Locke, who is in Africa to report on the rebel
group. He is at a crossroads, because he believes that he can no longer be
objective. He feels that his personality filters into every piece of reporting,
and furthermore, that he can no longer explore anything new because his life is
filled out with his fully formed personality. To go on living would be to be
stuck walking on an endlessly repetitive treadmill.
When Robertson (Chuck Mulvehill) dies of a heart attack, David assumes his
identity — even to the point of taking Robertson’s appointment book and
keeping the man’s planned meetings in Munich and Barcelona. However, his
identity switch becomes problematic for a couple of reasons. One is his deeper
involvement in arms sales to representatives of the rebel group. But the other
reason seems to affect him more — his old habits and personality begin to
inform his portrayal of the dead man, and he finds he cannot completely escape
into Robertson’s identity.
Things get worse when David’s wife and colleague both want to question
“Robertson” about David’s “death,” and David goes to elaborate lengths to dodge
them, using the help of a French architecture student (Maria Schneider, Marlon
Brando’s paramour in “Last Tango in Paris.”
For all the still-pertinent probing of politics, terrorism and ethical
journalism, Antonioni’s film — known as “Professione: reporter” in Europe
– is mainly about a single human being. Nicholson made this around the time
of “Chinatown” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” yet his restrained,
internal performance anticipates the pre-maniacal form of his character in “The
Shining”; David Locke is Nicholson as would be imagined by Camus, a man as
addicted to his imagined rootlessness as he is nonplussed.
– Advisory: This film contains violence, brief nudity.
– G. Allen Johnson
‘Tennis, Anyone?’
Starring
Donal Logue, Kirk Fox, Jason Isaacs. Co-written and directed by Logue. (Not
Rated. 100 minutes. At the Act in Berkeley).
Who better to make a comedy about a pair of fringe players on the
Hollywood scene than Donal Logue, who has been hovering on the periphery for
about 15 years. Logue (”The Tao of Steve”) stars, co-writes and directs about a
pair of losers who find themselves on the celebrity tennis circuit as marriages
fall apart, careers are ruined and the repartee never stops flowing.
Danny (Logue) and Gary (Kirk Fox) are two struggling actors who have a
couple of things in common. They are both from Mexican border towns in
California, and both are fanatical about tennis. Danny is the more successful
of the two, having just scored the lead in a series (as Logue did in “Grounded
for Life”). Gary stays afloat by giving tennis lessons to the well connected.
As his wife (Kylie Bax) leaves him and his career becomes increasingly
irrelevant, Danny and Gary form a bond that is strengthened on the celebrity
tennis circuit. Their chief nemesis is a comedic film star (Jason Isaacs) who
associates career success with worthiness as a human being.
Is it a great film? No. Logue’s rumpled personality and easygoing charm is
likable, but too often he cuts corners with some rather obvious scenes. It’s
hard to believe for one minute that a veteran actor of Danny’s talent would
ever let himself be coerced into performing a lame Arab jihadist comedy act at
a Jewish charity event, for example.
But the question the filmmaker is asking, perhaps of himself, is a
legitimate one: How worthy is a life that consists of nondescript supporting
film roles, a lousy TV show and a string of failed relationships? Change the
names and job description, and it’s a question we often ask of ourselves.
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Note: Logue will appear in person at the Saturday evening shows at the Act
in Berkeley.
– Advisory: This film contains language and sexually suggestive scenes.
– G. Allen Johnson
