Vi har många namn. Mai Zetterling. 1976. ⚃

Ah, this is a movie commissioned by the BBC and SVT in 1975 on the occasion of UNESCO’s International Women’s Year.

[ten minutes pass]

It’s very experimental. And Zetterling plays the er lead herself.

[the end]

The last half of this is brilliant. The excruciating scene with the well-intentioned cop is… well, excruciating. But brilliant! And then the ambiguous scene with the mom on the phone…

Zetterling is awesome throughout as an actor. Just stunning. Her stillness in the next-to-last scene is fantastic.

But then there’s the first half, which I… wasn’t quite convinced by?

So: Uneven, but with some scenes that are better than anything else in the world.

Mai Zetterling’s Stockholm. Mai Zetterling. 1979. ⚃

So this is a TV episode about Stockholm? From a series called Cities? Looks kinda interesting?

[ten minutes pass]

It’s very arty, but doesn’t quite have the confidence to be art? It drops in a sound “bed” all the time, and there’s all these pointless pans and cuts. The music is especially annoying since the transfer is really wobbly, so everything … wobbles.

[twenty minutes pass]

The docu is kinda fun: It’s a lot about Strindberg (of course) and stuff, so it’s not really… that much about Stockholm.

[the end]

It got more about Stockholm towards the end.

I like it, but the audio almost drove me insane.

INSANE I TELLS YA

Leningrad Cowboys Go America. Aki Kaurismäki. 1989. ⚃

I’ve seen this one before, in the 90s sometime. At the Cinematheque. I remember nothing about it, except… that I didn’t think it was that interesting?

I guess Kaurismäki has always had really, really bad music in his movies, and this time around, he’s just shifting that front and centre?

I think it was a huge commercial success (as these things go).

[eighteen minutes pass]

I was just thinking “this is very Jarmusch”… and the Jarmusch appears on the screen!

*gasp*

Anyway, this is a lot of fun, in a Jarmusch kinda distracted kind of way. The entire movie is obvs just a goof and an excuse to go to the US and film something, but there’s a bunch of good gags in here, and all these funny little details (like that guy in the coffin, and the dog with the coiffure)… This is like superior pot-head fantasy.

[thirty minutes pass]

OK, I’m getting kinda bored now. I think they ran out of jokes? I mean, there’s still jokes, but they just aren’t as good.

[the end]

I do understand why this movie is a phenomenon: It’s a good-natured, goofy movie with a bunch of music. It’s an ideal movie to watch with a group of rowdy, drunk, stoned friends.

But right here, right now, I was bored silly by the last half of this movie. There were occasionally fun bits, but too many scenes that didn’t really connect.