Mary (Abel Ferrara, 2005)

[Fletch F. Fletch]

The trailer and three clips are online:

http://www.twitchfilm.net/archives/004273.html



Also, the official site: http://www.mary-lefilm.com/

[Oedipax]

As one might expect, the excerpts are a hell of a lot more exciting than the trailer. I'm glad they're up as well. Does anyone know what kind of a release this is getting in the U.S., and when?

[Barmy]

Maybe his next film, "Go Go Tales" (a screwball comedy about a Manhattan lap dance club owner (Harvey Keitel) and the dancers who work for him), will get a better reception in the US of A.

[marty]

The film has not been picked up yet as Indiewire included itb in their list of best undistributed films

But the film will be released in Australia in 2006

[oldsheperd]

That's all good, but where's "Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy"?

[In Heaven]

That's all good, but where's "Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy"?

It's on the special edition of Driller Killer.

[Mr Pixies]

That's all good, but where's "Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy"?

It's on the special edition of Driller Killer.

it's just a trailer, is that all that exists, just the trailer?

[John Cope]

Pleased to see this movie getting such high praise on the top 10 thread. Thought maybe we should re-open the discussion since more of us have seen it now. I, for one, thought it was superb and the best domestic release this year (though how domestic it actually is and whether you'd consider what its received as a "release" is up for debate). Anyway, it's the first movie I've seen in a long time which has driven me to write about it, so whatever I say in forthcoming posts is really just me working through ideas I intend to expand on later. For now, let's just say that Ferrara has managed to push his formal technique beyond even what he managed in the great New Rose Hotel, while marrying that to a depth of philosophical consideration which is absolutely on par with his finest, most refined works of inquiry like The Addiction and Snake Eyes. Every shot is purposeful, intrinsic to the whole, without even the moments of disruptive force seeming out of context. Everything here is about development and balance. Typical Ferrara violence may erupt in flagrant displays but it is also omnipresent, mediated throughout. The content may at times venture into the histrionic but the form is always cool and considered, providing a counterpoint in technique though not one intended as contrast. As with Mann's recent films, Ferrara demands that we find meaning in the interplay of form and content. The form, in other words, is not just some flat style affixed to the narrative. The narrative is incomprehensible without taking the manner of telling into account.

[zedz]

I agree with the high praise for this film: a rare US film about ideas rather than actions. Ferrara piles a huge amount into the film, both in terms of thematic inspiration and stylistically, with found footage rubbing against film-within-film, TV-within-film and straight theological debate, but he's got the intelligence and visual sense (that spectral, depopulated New York could have fallen straight out of New Rose Hotel) to make it work. And the actors. Whitaker is terrific (who'd have picked him for that role?), Binoche is scarily self-possessed and persuasive, and Modine looks like he's having the time of his life settling old scores.

[chaddoli]

What is happening with this film? Is IFC releasing it or what?

[DrewReiber]

Maybe they're waiting for Oscar season?

[John Cope]

In recognition of this great film's absurdly belated US theatrical release (October 17-23 at the Anthology Film Archives in NY) here's a wonderful appreciation by Dan Kasman and an equally enlightening stroll through the neighborhood with the director himself.

I keep meaning to write something of greater depth on this one myself and went through it beat by beat last time around in order to do so but the sheer surfeit of dense thematic detail continues to frustrate my efforts (which is also my excuse for a stalled piece on Oliveira's La Lettre)...

[Barmy]

Overintellectualizing Ferrara does him no favors. I'd like to think he would piss, shit and puke on that Kasman piece (Kas has good taste, but that review read like a parody of something or other).

Just feel the imagery, please. Even the ridiculous scene where Modine takes over the projection booth was powerful somehow. But you have to be there.

As far as "indie" American filmakers go, Ferrara towers over almost everyone else. "Mary" is ignored but that silly twit Kelly Reichardt gets highbrow attention? Now that's fucked up.

Madonna's "Filth and Wisdom" is the most Ferraraesque film to get a real release this year. Thank God for small favors.

[foggy eyes]

Adrian Martin on Ferrara in last month's edition of 16:9.

[oh yeah]

I'm glad to see this film has its champions here. Great post, John Cope. Yes, this is a masterpiece. Its greatness somehow eluded me upon first viewing a few years ago, but now that I've re-watched both this and Go Go Tales -- also excellent if not quite on the same level -- I'm no longer convinced that Ferrara lost something after 2001's wonderful and underrated 'R Xmas. (I still need to re-watch 4:44 and Welcome to New York, though, both of which I found mediocre). In fact, Mary is an encouraging and beautiful evolution of Ferrara's increasingly impressionistic post-Funeral style which perhaps reached its culmination in Xmas (as well as, possibly, New Rose Hotel). Image for image, cut for cut, performance for performance, this is possibly Ferrara's most accomplished film as a pure director, as grand conductor of images and coordinator of emotion. It is full of the kind of full-throttle intensity that makes his work so singular, yet it also continues the low-key impressionism of the last couple films, utilizing lush lap dissolves and the poetics of streetlight-bokeh to capture inner space in a most economical manner. Fractured like a shattered mosaic yet calmly composed as a mandala, these contradictions don't betray some needing-to-be-banished "messiness" so much as they reveal the fundamental structural beauty and dialectical passion of Ferrara's cinema, how it shows us the moon and the gutter, the rape and the redemption. No other filmmaker working today is so dangerously, genuinely committed to capturing the human spirit in struggle as is Ferrara. Mary marks a new step forward with its final moments' denial of the death-drive-nihilism that's colored virtually every previous Ferrara picture. The tranquil ambiguity in its place suggests an artist interested in new possibilities, forever evolving and revising his picture of the world. And how many filmmakers, even the good ones, can you say that about anymore?

The more times I watch Ferrara's films, over and over again just as they encourage to be seen, the more astonished I am at the sheer number of masterpieces that he managed to pull off. Not counting the documentaries, of Ferrara's theatrical features I only have Driller Killer, Cat Chaser and Pasolini left to see, and I'd honestly say that every film from 1987's China Girl to 2007's Go Go Tales is a great film; certainly, at least 8 or 9 of them are full-on masterpieces. Again, how many directors can you say that about? There are a couple of shots in Mary that thrilled me so much -- not out of sheer, cold technical prowess but rather the form-content dynamic John Cope mentions -- that I literally clapped upon seeing them. And I was alone in the house, watching on my laptop. How embarrassing... I guess Ferrara at his best just makes me realize the beauty of cinema like few other filmmakers do, making me feel as giddy as Pauline Kael after Last Tango in Paris.