Dr Glas. Mai Zetterling. 1968. ⚅

[the end]

Wow.

OK, I’ve been doing er “liveblogging” of movies lately on this blog, but this movie was just so fascinating that I couldn’t really type anything while the movie was running.

At the start of this movie, I thought it was going to be a portrait of a misogynistic doctor… and then… it turns into something else. I mean, the storyline is pretty simple; straightforward even. But the way it’s told is just whooooa

I’m guessing this didn’t have a huge budget, so Zetterling made do, but the super-bright/infrared (?) bits are just sorta perfect. The actors are also incredibly… on… all the time, making this little period piece into something completely different.

It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s amazing.

Ariel. Aki Kaurismäki. 1988. ⚄

[twenty minutes pass]

🎔

This is such a cute movie.

[the end]

I guess this isn’t that different from Kaurismäki’s previous movies, but finally it all gels: The dead-pan humour and the pathos actually works: It all becomes really moving, and funny, and interesting.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s got the best actors he’s worked with, or that the cinematography is just… right… now, either.

Watching this is a pleasure.

Quentin Tarantino. Quentin Tarantino. 2019. ⚄

[fifteen minutes pass]

This is like… *insert standard Tarantino scene* *insert standard Tarantino scene* *insert standard Tarantino scene*.

But like everybody else, I like those standard Tarantino scenes, so it’s a lot of fun. Let’s see if this coheres into an actual movie, because sometimes these collections of Tarantino scenes don’t.

[fifteen minutes pass]

Uh oh!

SPOILERS!

Is this about Charles Manson?

Well, Tarantino snuck that up on us…

How disappointing! How dull.

[an hour passes]

I’m torn. The Sharon Tate scenes are delightful… but they’re also murder porn scenes: Since we know that she’s going to be horribly killed, we know that they’re building up her character in this movie so that when she’s finally (presumably) horribly murdered by the hippie kids, the audience is gonna be all shocked and sad.

It’s such a sophomoric attempt at audience manipulation.

Then there’s the scene with the western star, who’s… playing in what looks like the most bizarre TV pilot ever. What’s up with that?

It’s not like anything here is boring, but I’m deeply annoyed with the movie.

ANNOYED!

[the end]

*sniffle* *sniffle*

OK, this may be the greatest movie ever.

EVER!

OK, that’s not true, but I really didn’t realise that this was a Tarantino fantasia like Inglorious Basterds — not how the world was, but how it was supposed to be. It’s like the anti-Manson movie: Tarantino ridicules, skewers and deflates his whole thing, which is the opposite tack taken by, well, everybody else.

YAY TARANTINO.

I’ve never cheered anybody getting chewed up by a dog as I did in this movie.

Tarantino made it all work, in the best movie he’s made.

I probably would have enjoyed it more if I’d known how it was going to turn out, though. Which is a very strange thing.

So here it is: In this movie, Sharon Tate survives.