Colashwood

There has been an Ed Wood DVD box on the French market for a few months now, including Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 From Outer Space. Why are these films considered as the worst ever made in Hollywood (or elsewhere) is beyond my understanding. They are very awkward ; the acting is stiff and mostly unprofessional ; and still they do convey — especially Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 — an eerie feeling of metaphysical dereliction — the dreadfully lonely scene with the old widower in Plan 9 is outstanding in an odd way.

*** Spoilers*** I bought the box, and a few days ago I landed up with Tim Burton's Ed Wood. Ed Wood is an outstanding film, showing, of course, none of the awkwardness of Ed Wood's own creations. The cast is wonderful (Depp, Landau, Lisa Marie, Jeffrey Jones especially), the direction is so precise and subtle it lets you savor the taste of good bad cinema without a single sneer ; the music is grand (Theremin be thanked !). And there is more to it — a perfect reflection of the sad, bleached light that irradiates Ed Wood's own films, (if nothing else could). The scene of the old widower now gets a poignant explanation — Depp-Wood stages it without even having a film in his mind, just to reassure poor old dying Landau-Lugosi. Well, he might well have less altruistic motives, but what do we care ? Wood records the frail gait, the trembling hand, the white light reverberating on the shabby suburban home. That is the sequence that shimmers with such melancholy in Ed Wood's real own Plan 9. No wonder : death looms large. I love the fact that Burton includes this very same sequence in Ed Wood, with an ecstatic Depp lip-sync-hing the scene — who mirrors who now ? Isn't Ed Wood, the man, a Burton creation, after all ; or isn't Ed Wood the film time-teleported directly from the fifties to your screen ? Who knows ? It takes the slightly too familiar faces of Bill Murray and Sarah Jessica Parker to steal you from this ravishing time wrap (Landau's and Depp's should be as familiar : but they're far greater actors, aren't they ?). Alas, you are not lost in the black and white land of your wildest dreams and there's a way back home.

*** An other spoiler, and a puzzle*** A word about Orson Welles' uncanny apparition. The smooth-skinned, handsome Welles you see here is a thing of wonder — so like Kane's Welles that the mind boggles ; but then : how can he be filming Touch of Evil ? And that, my friends, is one of Ed Wood's (the film, the man) greatest and most devastatingly naive ideas.

Anime is not my cup of tea, and my favorite in the field is — sorry for Miyazaki — My Neighbours the Yamada. So I was expecting something from Pompoko — but not quite what I got. There is no less genius in Pompoko than in My Neighbours the Yamada, though : and it is displayed in a wonderfully different way. I loved the watercolor aspect of the Yamada world, its beautiful night scenes and the use of haiku. In Pompoko you have much stronger colors and drawings which are more in the usual anime line. But — the crazy epic mood that pervades Pompoko is rather unique. The tanuki (doglike creatures living in the forest and — for some of them — transforming at will) fight fiercely against human settlements. From the first battle to the last hurray, the tanuki display their splendid and wonderful art of transformation, a clearly cinematographic one. The ghostly parade over the desolate suburban city is a unique piece of cinema (and so is the sad, mad Golden boat, drifting towards an uncertain paradise). More subtle, more upsetting is the use by Takahata of several animal aspects to depict the tanuki. The cuddly ones, the feral ones, the very simple ones — this is clever and puzzling, as is ultimately the film itself. But who on earth needs evidences ? (And — ahem — why the fuss about the balls ?)

I have seen this two days after the exhilarating "Kill", by Okamoto. So ? They both feature a middle-aged ronin with a good heart and an even better sword, inns full of "the good people", poor but industrious, and rather mean and silly clansmen. And pensive wives or wives to be. But Kill is a stylish, funny, irrelevant film, with a wonderful comical Tatsuya Nakadai, whereas Ame agaru fails in almost everything it attempts. The actor playing the ronin has no body tension (all right, that's part of his technique, but it doesn't work on screen. The old master — incidentally played by dear Nakadai — could have taught him a few of his acting tricks.) and there is no chemistry between any of those actors. Shiro Mifune has his papa's voice, but not much more — in this film at least, and the landscapes are filmed with a striking apathy. Worst of all is the drivel about "the good poor people" — so damn condescending. Hadn't Kurosawa had his take on the subject with the great Lower Depths ? And there was no condescension then. For a great film on the Japanese slums (other than Lower Depths, that is), try Humanity and Paper Balloons. And well, feel-good movies are seldom good.