The 1995 Mini-List

[swo17]

ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 1995

VOTE THROUGH JULY 31

Please post in this thread if you think anything needs to change about the list of eligible titles.

[therewillbeblus]

Can you please add

Forget Paris (Billy Crystal)
My Father is a Hero (Cory Yuen)
White Christmas (Keith Scoble)

[swo17]

Added, thanks

[yoshimori]

Surprised Unzipped (Douglas Keeve's incredible Ellen-Kuras-shot Isaac Mizrahi doc) isn't on the list already. Does no one know it anymore?

Can you also please add SAI Yoichi's dark police procedural, Marks. There doesn't seem to be a decent print available anywhere, but I saw it a decade after its release, and it still plays in my crowded mind.

Two oddball shorts I'd vote for are Reggio's "Evidence" and the Greenaway segment from Lumiere and Company. Not nearly as good as the Lynch segment, but ...

I'm assuming everyone's seen Fallen Angels and [safe]. Tran Anh Hung's Cyclo is also a standout - one of my favorite's of all-time. And God's Comedy (Monteiro). And Love Letter (Iwai). And ...

[swo17]

All added, thanks!

[domino harvey]

Surprised Unzipped (Douglas Keeve's incredible Ellen-Kuras-shot Isaac Mizrahi doc) isn't on the list already. Does no one know it anymore?

The only reason I even remember this is the Mr Show parody with Shannon Sossamon

[Black Hat]

Can you add Whisper of the Heart, please? Thanks.

[domino harvey]

It’s in there, try searching by the director’s name if you’re not finding it

[uncut_gem]

You've got Full Body Massage, but you're missing two other Roegs - Two Deaths and Hotel Paradise

[swo17]

Thanks, I've now added those

[knives]

A little question on the Masterlist. Greenaway is the only director listed for Lumiere and Company. Does that mean only his segment is eligible or does it represent the whole movie?

[swo17]

It's all eligible, either as a whole or individually. I've adjusted the database to allow for voting either way. The individual films are named after the cities cited in the film, with the exception of the Lynch segment

[knives]

Here’s a few small titles that I think should be added to the main list.

This year really feels like African cinema cementing itself independently of any specific personality as really important. My two favorite examples are The Great White of Lambarene and especially Guimba the Tyrant. The former is an effective take down of liberal assistance positing it as a tool of colonialism rather than a true aid to independence. Its take on Schweitzer is ruthless with nothing penetrating the man’s insistence that he did good.

Guimba is a great fairy tale dealing with power in a more localized sense. I really love this for how it uses real world things such as a literal sand castle to further the sense of the unreal.

I also love Wiseman’s suitably epic Ballet which just feels like such a definitive presentation of its subject that nothing else will live up to it.

Finally Sokurov’s A Soldier’s Dream is more than it’s B-roll origins winding up as an effective dream experience and one of Sokurov’s best shorts.

[swo17]

All added, thanks!

[knives]

Here’s the year’s cheat sheet. Looks like it is going to be another very strong year. Also seems to be the first year when I, personally, was cognizant of films as there’s a few I remember the premiere of.

[domino harvey]

A pretty weak year for me, but 1996 might be the strongest yet

[Lowry_Sam]

I thought all odd years would be tough for the 90s, but 95 is now looking like the exception as I started looking at music videos to fill up 25 for my first draft.

Are Welcome To The Dollhouse and Angels & Insects not 1995? I don't see them.

[therewillbeblus]

Welcome To The Dollhouse is on the '96 list

[Lowry_Sam]

IMDB has them both under 1995 (festival screenings?), but then mentions a 1996 release date (January for Angels & Insects).

[swo17]

Dollhouse is intentionally in 1996 (only an uneventful festival screening in 1995). I've added Angels & Insects to 1995

[Lowry_Sam]

Okay, thanks. The more competition going to 95 & the less to 96 means an easier task of a list for both years for me, but I wouldn't want you to break the rules to do so!

[knives]

There’s a lot of good to All Things Fair, Widerberg is clearly supremely talented, making me feel bad about my strong negative reaction to how the central relationship is handled. Perhaps it’s all on my hangups against teacher-students relationships after all I believe he’s of age in WWII Sweden so this is just an unethical relationship rather than statutory rape. I don’t think so though as even with that consideration the film is blind to the nature of this relationship treating it with the same romantic hope as something like Brief Encounter. The film sees the relationship as a freeing one that allows growth in both participants and it’s the problems of the outside world which hurts and harms it which seems kind of absurd as even within the film Widerberg must tell a story in which the teacher hurts the student by encouraging absenteeism for sex. If the movie allowed at least this to hurt it’s view of the relationship I’d get what’s going on, but that sequence is treated as a joke with the punchline being the sweetness they feel for each other. Also, the initial and largely followed through on characterization of the student is as a childishly perverse and rude kid. A real kid not ready for a serious anything which left me in the lurch on why the teacher found anything relatable to him beyond the satisfaction of the power imbalance. I really don’t see anything positive to this addition to the film.

It’s too bad I’m so preoccupied by this relationship though. There are a lot of other elements to the movie that I think succeed. A somewhat unlikable boy coming of age in WWII is a classic sort of story that Widerberg adds to in a fresh feeling way thanks to his emphasis on internal conflicts. There’s this wonderful focus on the realization of vapidness which kind of reminds me of Skolimowski. The boy matures thanks to a realization that his situation is pointless and restrictive. It’s a real fight to see if there’s meaning to life which seemed deeply felt. I just wish Widerberg figured a way of achieving some meaning through a relationship other than the one he chose.

[Mr Sausage]

It's been a while since I've seen the film, so I won't dispute many of the details you've raised, but I do remember at the end, when the relationship is winding down, that the teacher begins using her power over the student to punish and humiliate him, and that this for instance showed the unfair balance of power and led to his (odd) protest of her. One more stricture to flout. A moment of hopefulness given the context, as this boy's growth away from restrictiveness implies, too, he'll also have no business with restrictive ideologies like the fascism that was surrounding (and creeping into) his country. I remember an early scene of a Jewish boy being excluded from some school puberty ritual, and that this became context for what the boy was rejecting in the end (without Widerberg putting too heavy an emphasis on that).

As for what the teacher liked about the boy--honestly, attraction is unaccountable. I remember the romantic hope you found in it arising from mutual escapism: her from a loveless relationship, him from the rituals of boyhood. That it curdles, becomes the thing it was to be an escape from, and then proves abusive, made it work for me at the time (although, again, it has been a while).

[knives]

No, your memory is largely correct. He was sort of the leader of the mini-fascism that you first reference so the film is in part about his drift from that role, but your memory is completely accurate for how the role turns out the exception being that the film shows him having the strength to sort of defeat her cruelties if he chose to. The fact that the relationship so sours does help a lot, but the lead up feels handled with such a lack of concern and the follow through based more in personal issues that the relationship doesn’t seem treated as one that was inherently a bad idea. That’s what I’m trying to work out as there is so much to praise here that I’d love to love this movie.

[therewillbeblus]

This was my take from five years back

All Things Fair (Bo Widerberg): Erotic cinema tows a risky line, necessitating an intimacy between viewer and the universality of the experiences we're seeing in order to work at all. I'm admittedly not usually a fan of this subgenre, since I don't find many filmmakers succeed at divorcing their own self-interest and solipsistic erotica in an effort to share this feeling compatibly with an audience, rather than project their own version of it. This film, however, breaks that mold, which shouldn't be a surprise from the director of Elvira Madigan, who offered us an opportunity to feel love all over again instead of professing specificity to observe and posture at. The plot may be too much for some to get past, a female teacher engaging in a sexual relationship with a 15-year old boy, but the film has zero concern for ethics and total concern for immersing itself in the unstoppable allure of sexual attraction and the consequences of the process of following urges and making oneself vulnerable in a union that can't sustain simpatico agendas.

The excitement, the chasing games, the flirtations, risks, and sudden elicitation of details otherwise ignored in another, are all granted ample time to flesh out. The characters aren't externally judged for cheating or breaking norms, but allow themselves to embrace what they feel in a given moment, because denying that would go against the internal logic hypnotically binding them to each other. This is a great film about what it's like to be a pubescent male with a daydream actualized, but it's also a film that, when deconstructed from the specifics of its time period and demographic characteristics, speaks to the overwhelming spiritual energy passing between you and your first lover. The confusing, tantalizing, debilitating rush that boosts our confidence and feels depersonalized in an 'out of body' way as we cannot believe we could be so lucky to deserve this connection. As the narrative progresses, we realize that we are our own judges, juries and executioners, and the consequential formulation of identity that Stig experiences as he contests with his desires and newfound morality through nonsexual male-to-male intimacy, and empathy for both sexual and nonsexual people he's indirectly harmed, finds a complex shaky balance that defines his humanity. What starts as an erotic film emerges into a full coming-of-age drama, validating each stage and treating one's story of development as an invaluable part of life, regardless of the pain and glory, losses and gains, populating its path.