this week in film and television

THE MELT GOES ON FOREVER: THE ART AND TIMES OF DAVID HAMMONS

David Hammons works on a piece for Documenta IX (photo by Hessischer Rundfunk)

THE MELT GOES ON FOREVER: THE ART AND TIMES OF DAVID HAMMONS (Judd Tully & Harold Crooks, 2022)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, May 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
themeltfilm.com

“David believes that the less said about him, the better off he is,” the late poet and Gathering of the Tribes founder Steve Cannon says about his friend, artist David Hammons, in The Melt Goes on Forever: The Art and Times of David Hammons, opening May 5 at Film Forum.

In 2020, Hammons, who was born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1943 and has been based in New York City for nearly fifty years, installed Day’s End, an homage to Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1975 similarly named intervention in an abandoned industrial building on Pier 52, outside where the Whitney is today. The 325-foot-long brushed-steel outline of the warehouse has no interior, a ghostly memorial to those lost in the AIDS crisis.

With The Melt, directors Judd Tully and Harold Crooks have constructed a stirring documentary that is missing one key figure: Hammons, who doesn’t do interviews or talk about his personal life, preferring to have his work stand on its own. There’s a reason why the subtitle is “the Art and Times,” not the more common phrase “the Life and Times.”

More than two dozen art historians (Kellie Jones, Bridget R. Cooks, Richard Powell, Gylbert Coker, Robert Farris Thompson), dealers and gallerists (Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Dominique Lévy, Jack Tilton, Adam Sheffer, Robert Mnuchin), artists (Suzanne Jackson, Fred Wilson, Tschabalala Self, Betye Saar, Joe Lewis, Lorna Simpson), collectors (Dimitris Daskalopoulos), and curators (Robert Storr, Ilene Susan Fort, Mary Jane Jacob) share stories about Hammons, forming a picture of a fabulously talented eclectic iconoclast who does what he wants, when he wants, the way he wants.

Among his revolutionary works discussed in the film are Bliz-aard Ball Sale, in which he sold snowballs, arranged in rows of descending size, on the streets of New York; African American Flag, a reimagining of the US flag but in the Pan-African colors of red, black, and green; How You Like Me Now?, a billboard of Jesse Jackson as a blond-haired, blue-eyed white man; Flight Fantasy, painted on the wall of Cannon’s apartment; Untitled (Night Train), two circular rows of clear and green bottles of Night Train and Thunderbird planted in a pile of coal; and Blues for Smoke, a blue model train rolling across tracks that wind around grand pianos on their side, inspired by John Coltrane’s song “Blue Train.”

“I just thought he was nuts,” artist Paul H-O says about watching Hammons go through garbage to find potential materials.

“It’s not the art object itself,” Hammons explains in a 1991 NPR radio interview. “It’s the daring of the act.”

Archival footage of Hammons includes a visit by filmmaker Michael Auder to a Rome studio in 1989 where Hammons pontificates on what success means to him while constructing an untitled sculpture using real Black hair; Hammons adding cotton to wooden sticks in his Harlem studio in Michael Blackwood’s 1992 After Modernism: The Dilemma of Influence; Hammons introducing students to his outdoor sculpture Rock Fan, consisting of electric fans on a large rock on the campus of Williams College in 1993; and clips by Alex Harsley of Hammons making “Basketball Drawings” by bouncing a basketball against paper on a wall and Hammons kicking a can in his 2004 Phat Free performance.

Delving into a 1990 group show at Museum Overholland, curator Jan Christiaan Braun notes, “‘Black USA’ was more than David Hammons. It was an effort to find a podium for Black American artists. He was one of them. The meaning of ‘Black USA’ was bigger than David Hammons, and he himself thought so too. He was very, very much supporting the idea of bringing out Black art. That’s why he immediately said to me, ‘I’m your man.’”

Extensive attention is given to the 2016 career retrospective “Five Decades” at Mnuchin Gallery, which lends insight to Hammons’s wide oeuvre and process when it comes to hanging his work. “Two weeks prior to the opening, David expressed an interest in coming in to see the show,” dealer Sukanya Rajarantnam recalls, not so fondly. “Um, his reaction was not exactly exuberant. He didn’t like what we’d done and, in fact, hated it. So he decided to change things. . . . The show itself became an installation and an artwork by David.” I remember being blown away by the final exhibition, which featured many of the pieces mentioned in the documentary.

David Hammons unveils Rock Fan to students at Williams College (photo courtesy Williams College Museum of Art)

Throughout the film, arts journalist Tully and documentarian Crooks (The Price We Pay, Surviving Progress) regularly cut to Umar bin Hassan of the Last Poets performing Cannon’s catalog essay-poem “Rousing the Rubble,” recorded during Covid and originally written for Hammons’s 1990 PS1 museum show of the same name, accompanied by a barrage of grainy videos of New York City in the twentieth century and animation by Tynesha Foreman that brings some of his works to life against a pulsating Afro-jazz score:

“On the Streets of Manhattan, East Side West Side All Around the Town the Sidewalks of New York — after the bars and the clubs empty out the sordid the homeless! The misbegotten under the cover of darkness Blue Moon No moon, under the cover of darkness in the wee small hours up in Harlem — Midtown — on the Lower Eastside — Performing Artist — this is when you see the empty bottles and empty people makin’ their rounds, into makin’ their own sounds — into smiles into frowns! Digging in garbage in search of more empties — bottles and cans! Those who do be hungry doing something about their condition — with David on the scene in those lonely wee small hours after hours state of New York! Raw Energy! Making his rounds, dreams turned into nightmares heavy into art — that New York art scene outdoor art — dreams turned into realities — all night diners — back in his studio on 125th Street — making art out of that which he has heard and seen on the scene out of funk! Out of central Illinois — out of Los Angeles out of his world travels! Creating a space for the spirits! That flash of the spirit!”

The spectacular original music features composer Ramachandra Borcar on percussion, piano, found objects, and other instruments; saxophonists Idris Ackamoor, Marshall Allen, Shabaka Hutchings, and Frank Lozani; Tommy Babin and Dave Watts on bass; Aaron Doyle on trumpet and flugelhorn; Jeff Johnston on piano; and Kullak Viger Rojas on surdo. It pays tribute to the jazz influences Hammons has cited over the years, such legends as Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, and Coltrane. Foreman’s animation unfolds to those same vibrant rhythms, echoed in the artworks. (Hammons’s art influences range from his mentor, Charles White, to Marcel Duchamp.)

Even without their subject’s participation, Tully and Crooks are able to fill in much of the mystery surrounding Hammons, with the help of members of the arts community who adore him and his work, like partially furnishing the emptiness inherent in Day’s End. (Hammons did sit down for an interview with Whitney director Adam D. Weinberg to celebrate the opening of the Pier 52 project in June 2021, which you can watch here.)

The Melt Goes on Forever reveals Hammons to be a true nonconformist, a genius who doesn’t need to be center stage, letting his art do the talking for him.

Tully and Crooks will be at Film Forum for Q&As on May 5 at 7:15 presented by A Gathering of the Tribes, on May 6 at 7:15 with Suzanne Jackson, and on May 7 at 4:40.

PRISMATIC GROUND: ONLOOKERS

Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers, screening at BAM on May 4, looks at tourists and locals in Laos

ONLOOKERS (Kimi Takesue, 2023)
BAM Cinematheque
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Thursday, May 4, 7:00
Festival runs May 3–7 at multiple venues
www.bam.org
www.onlookersfilm.com

“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak,” John Berger writes in the seminal text Ways of Seeing. “But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”

In documentary filmmaker Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers, which is screening at BAM on May 4 at 7:00 as part of “Prismatic Ground 2023” (and will be followed by a Q&A with Takesue), there are no words, no dialogue — just seventy-two minutes of stunning visuals exploring what we see and what we know, what we are present for and what we are absent for.

The film takes place in various parts of Laos as director, producer, cinematographer, sound recordist, and editor Takesue sets up her camera and leaves it there as scenes unfold in real time and with natural sound, from a breathtaking fourteen-second sunset to five and a half minutes of six women sitting by the side of the road, preparing to fill begging bowls for a long line of Buddhist monks. Animals graze in a temple courtyard as bells chime. Women sell goods at an open-air market. Rivers flow, wind rustles trees, roosters crow, birds chirp, a cat rests on a step, a man relaxes in a hammock, all taking their time, no one in a hurry.

Then the tourists arrive; a few run up to take pictures of a monk beating a drum, then walk away, not actually stopping to watch and listen. A woman snaps a photo of three fellow sightseers standing atop a small, raging waterfall as a man fishes below. A local worker waits as a woman checks her cell phone, as if he isn’t there, standing next to her. A group of backpackers gets a prime view at a boat racing festival while locals observe from the shore. On a mountain, six tourists search for the best angle to take selfies. Visitors at a guest house sit in an outdoor lounge and watch Friends.

Born in Colorado and raised in Hawai’i and Massachusetts, Takesue has previously made Where Are You Taking Me? in Uganda, Heaven’s Crossroad in Vietnam, and 95 and 6 to Go in Hawai’i, about reconnecting with her grandfather. In Onlookers, she is not necessarily criticizing the tourists or celebrating the Laotian locals; she’s merely showing how people witness and experience the world, particularly when it comes to travelers and residents.

She beautifully captures this relationship in a short but captivating scene that begins with a static shot of an old religious shrine that looks like it hasn’t been in operation for years. A young woman enters the frame, sits down, poses for a selfie, stands up, snaps a photo of the shrine, then saunters off, never once stopping to just look at the shrine itself. The camera lingers on the building for several seconds, with nobody around, just the decaying structure set against a blue sky and between lush greenery.

We see what we want to see, when we want to see it, not always recognizing what is right in front of us, whether we’re at home or on vacation. It reminded me of people who go to a museum and take pictures of classic artworks but only see them through the lens of their phone rather than experiencing them with their own eyes. In fact, each frame of Onlookers is composed like a painting that slowly comes to life.

“The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe,” Berger writes in his book. “Yet this seeing which comes before words, and can never be quite covered by them, is not a question of mechanically reacting to stimuli. (It can only be thought of in this way if one isolates the small part of the process which concerns the eye’s retina.) We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach — though not necessarily within arm’s reach. To touch something is to situate oneself in relation to it. . . . We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are. Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen.”

In all films, the audience might not have a choice of what they’re looking at, but they can decide for themselves what they’re seeing. And in the case of Onlookers, what they’re seeing is a gorgeous portrait of ourselves that no selfie can catch.

An annual round-up of experimental and avant-garde documentaries, the third edition of “Prismatic Ground” runs May 3–7, consisting of more than five dozen features and shorts at the Museum of the Moving Image, Maysles Documentary Center, BAM Cinematheque, DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema, Light Industry, and Anthology Film Archives. The opening-night film is Soda Jerk’s Hello Dankness, while Alexandre Larose’s scènes de ménage trilogy closes the festival. Other highlights include Ayanna Dozier’s Close, but no Cigar trilogy, Naomi Uman’s Three Sparks, and Tsai Ming-Liang’s Where and Where do you stand, Tsai Ming-Liang?

32 SOUNDS

Sam Green explores how we listen and connect with humanity and nature in 32 Sounds

32 SOUNDS (Sam Green, 2022)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, April 28
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
32sounds.com

Sam Green’s 32 Sounds might be about how we hear the world, but it’s also filled with a barrage of stunning visuals that, combined with the binaural audio, creates a unique and exciting cinematic journey.

Green was inspired by his relatively new friendship with experimental composer and musician Annea Lockwood, which blossomed over Skype during the pandemic, and by François Girard’s 1993 biographical anthology Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, in which Colm Feore portrays the Canadian classical pianist most famous for his interpretations of such Bach works as the Goldberg Variations. In 32 Sounds, Green teams with composer, DJ, and musician JD Samson, from such bands as Le Tigre and MEN, to present ninety-five minutes of remarkable delicacy and insight.

The film is best experienced on headphones; at Film Forum, where it opens April 28, it will be shown several different ways, including with specially customized headphones with the audio mixed live inside the theater. The sound was recorded binaurally, so the audience can hear speech and movement as if it’s to your left or right, behind you, far away, or close up.

In the film, Princeton professor and scientist Edgar Choueiri introduces us to Johann Christoff, a recording device shaped like a human head that “captures sound exactly how you hear it.” Similar technology has been used for such theatrical presentations as The Encounter and Blindness. Hollywood veteran and two-time Oscar winner Mark Mangini (Dune, Mad Max: Fury Road) designed the sound for the film, immersing the viewer into what feels like a three-dimensional universe.

The film kicks off with Green and Samson in a playful scene that sets the stage for what is to follow. “This is a little bit of an odd movie in that we’re going to ask you to do some things,” Green explains. “Simple things, like close your eyes. If you don’t want to do them, don’t worry about it. But the truth is, the more you give yourself to the experience” — Samson then cuts in, finishing, “the more you get out of it.”

The first sound Green explores, appropriately enough, is of the womb, recorded by former midwife Aggie Murch, whose husband is Oscar-winning film editor and sound designer Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, The Conversation). Over a purplish white screen with no figuration, Green discusses Walter Murch’s 2005 essay “Womb Tone,” in which Murch writes, “Hearing is the first of our senses to be switched on. . . . Although our mature consciousness may be betrothed to sight, it was suckled by sound, and if we are looking for the source of sound’s ability — in all its forms — to move us more deeply than the other senses and occasionally give us a mysterious feeling of connectedness to the universe, this primal intimacy is a good place to begin.”

Green then jumps from birth to death, taking out old cassette tapes of voice messages he has saved from decades past, telling us how “they hold the voices of so many people I’ve loved who are gone. I was wondering, How does that work? How does a little piece of eighth-of-an-inch magnetic tape hold a person? Make it seem like they are alive and in front of you more than any photo or piece of film ever could. I was wondering if sound is somehow a way to understand time, and time passing, and loss, and the ephemeral beauty of the present moment, all the things that I keep coming back to in my movies.”

He meets with Cheryl Tipp, curator of Wildlife and Environmental Sounds at the British Library Sound Archive, who shares the poignant and heartbreaking story of the mating call of the Hawaiian bird the moho braccatus. Lockwood, the subject of a short companion film Green directed, demonstrates how she has recorded the sound of rivers for fifty years, after gaining notoriety for her burning-piano installations.

Foley artist Joanna Fang reveals how she creates sound effects for films using unusual items in her studio, from a bowling ball to a wet cloth. “Art can elevate a truth beyond what is feasibly there,” she says. “And if we pull it off right, hopefully the emotional experience of hearing it and being part of it is enough to make you fully accept the poetry of what you’re hearing. Because isn’t that what we’re all trying to do, trying to take what we’re feeling on the inside and show it to somebody else, or let them listen to it, and have them feel the same way we do?”

Black revolutionary and fugitive Nehanda Abiodun listens to a tape of McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” transporting her to another place and time. Poet and cultural theorist Fred Moten marvels about “ghost sounds” of his relatives. Bay Area military veteran and environmental journalist Harold Gilliam postulates about sleep and foghorns in the context of “being part of this total community of life and nonlife on Earth.” Lebanese artist and musician Mazen Kerbaj recalls being able to make sound art during bombings when others were trapped in their homes or dying.

Green gives examples of recording “room tones,” a documentary process in which the subject is silent for thirty seconds as the sound recordist grabs the natural sound in order to help with later editing. It’s fascinating watching Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Rebecca Solnit, and others sit or stand uncomfortably as they wait, and we wait; we are not used to seeing such stagnation in a motion picture.

Annea Lockwood has been recording rivers for more than fifty years

Deaf sound artist Christine Sun Kim uses ASL to describe vibration and how she was taught when she was a child that sound was not part of her life, a concept that infuses her art. “I realized that sound is like money, power, control; it’s social currency,” she explains.

Along the way Green also looks at inventor Thomas Edison, polymath Charles Babbage, electronics engineer Alan Blumlein, and a classic Memorex commercial starring Ella Fitzgerald. We see and hear Glass playing piano, church bells ringing in Venice, Don Garcia driving through the city in his red Mazda blasting Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight,” and John Cage performing 4’33” outdoors. A Zamboni cleans the ice at a hockey rink. A cat purrs. Evel Knievel jumps over obstacles on his motorcycle. Samson blasts away on a whoopee cushion. Danny drives his Big Wheel through the empty halls of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Different groups dance to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.”

Oscar nominee Green (The Weather Underground, A Thousand Thoughts) edited the documentary with Nels Bangerter; the new, sharp cinematography is by Yoni Brook. The visuals range from a deluge of quick cuts of archival footage to nearly blank screens when Green asks the audience to close their eyes and just listen.

While the film is a technical marvel, it also becomes deeply emotional, as Green and several subjects listen to recordings of friends and family no longer with us, something you can’t get out of a photo album. It made me think of the messages I had saved on my answering machine of my mother, who passed away in 2017; while I try to avoid hearing them — they used to pop up after I went through new messages, sending me screaming into another room — it is comforting to know that they exist, that I can hear her whenever I need to. Such is the power of sound.

Green will be at Film Forum for postscreening Q&As with Lockwood, moderated by Nadia Sirota, on April 28 at 7:40, with Choueiri and Anderson on April 29 at 7:40, and with Samson, moderated by Matt Wolf, on April 30 at 5:15.

OLD SCHOOL KUNG FU FEST: SWORD FIGHTING HEROES EDITION

US premiere of 2K remaster of Chang Peng-yi’s The Night Orchid is part of Metrograph series

OLD SCHOOL KUNG FU FEST: SWORD FIGHTING HEROES EDITION
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
April 21-30
metrograph.com

When I was a kid, I spent many a rainy Saturday afternoon watching Kung Fu Theater, a weekly serving of wuxia films, poorly dubbed martial arts films from Hong Kong that were among the coolest movies I’d ever seen, filled with indecipherable plots and fantabulous weapons. It didn’t get much better than The Story of Drunken Master, Five Fingers of Death, and Bruce Lee squaring off against Chuck Norris and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Last year the RZA and DJ Scratch joined forces for the tribute song “Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theatre,” in which the RZA declares, “Can we watch another movie next Saturday? / Be sure to tune in next week / for The Masked Avengers and Heroes of the East.”

You don’t have to wait for next week, as Metrograph is currently showing the tenth “Old School Kung Fu Fest: Sword Fighting Heroes Edition” through April 30. The tenth festival consists of fifteen flicks, little known and classic, including the US premiere of Lin Jing-jie’s three-and-a-half-hour documentary The King of Wuxia, about King Hu; Hu’s 1969-71 A Touch of Zen, 1973 The Fate of Lee Khan, and 1975 The Valiant Ones; Yang Shih-ching’s 1970 The Grand Passion, made by A Touch of Zen’s production manager during downtime of that film; a 2K remaster of Chang Peng-I’s 1983 The Night Orchid; Sung Tsun-shou’s 1969 Iron Mistress; and Chris Huang’s 2000 The Legend of the Sacred Stone.

Below are some of the other highlights of the series, which is presented by Metrograph and Subway Cinema in association with Taipei Cultural Center in New York.

THE GHOST HILL (Ting Shan-hsi, 1971)
Sunday, April 23, 3:00
metrograph.com

The Swordsman of All Swordsmen trilogy concludes with Ting Shan-hsi’s fantastically mad The Ghost Hill. You don’t need to have seen Joseph Kuo’s The Swordsman of All Swordsmen or Lung Chien’s The Bravest Revenge — although the former is screening at Metrograph April 22-23 and the latter is available virtually on Metrograph at Home — to get instantly sucked into the grand finale, in which Tsai Ing-chieh (Tien Peng) might at last avenge the murder of his father by Yun Chung-chun (Chen Bao-liang). The wuxia epic begins with a high-flying battle between Tsai and Feng Chun-ching (David Tang Wei), aka Black Dragon Hero, on a rocky beachfront, overseen by the Grand Master (Kao Ming), who will present to the winner the coveted Purple Light Sword, bestowing upon him the title of Master Swordsman.

Tsai takes home the trophy, but it is immediately stolen from him by thieves who also slay his master. Tsai and his goofy but loyal brother head out to regain the sword and kill Yun, but it turns out that someone has already beaten them to it, although Yun’s daughter, Fei Yen-tzu (Polly Shang-kuan), an accomplished assassin known as Flying Swallow, blames Tsai for the evil deed. But soon Tsai, his brother, Fei, and Feng are teaming up to defeat the evil King Chin (Hsieh Han) and the girl he raised, Chin Man-chiao (Han Hsiang-chin), aka Princess of the Underworld, who he is grooming to be his bride.

As the men fight over the women and the women fight over the men, the action moves into Chin’s fortress, where Tsai and his merry band of homeless beggars must make it through ten boobytrapped hells in order to face Chin and his dangerous left arm.

Writer-director Ting, cinematographer Lin Tsan-ting, art director Tsao Nien-lung, and set decorator Chen Shang-lin add fab touches to every scene, from character names — Green Demon Judge, Misty Light Master, Iron Bull, and the Murdering Wonder Child to the Black and White Wuchang, the Ox Head Demon, the Yanluo Wang, and the Soul-Hunting Yaksha — to colorful costumes, lavishly cheesy sets, a boiling oil bath, epic sound effects and music (with Theremin!), ultracool weapons, and plenty of fire and blood, along with watermelons and a special beheading.

There are also a number of awesome quotes. “We can never understand the grievances of the previous generation,” Yen-tzu posits. “The gates of heaven are open but you choose to knock on hell’s door,” King Chin warns Tsai.

The Ghost Hill evokes such later films as Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, Chang Cheh’s Five Venoms, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but it’s in a class all by itself. And it should be special watching it not alone on a rainy day but in a theater packed with wuxia fans likely to be hooting and hollering all the way.

Shu Qi is an expertly trained killer with a conscience in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s gorgeous period drama

THE ASSASSIN (刺客聶隱娘) (NIE YINNIANG) (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015)
Saturday, April 29, 7:00, and Sunday, April 30, 9:15
metrograph.com

Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first film in eight years is a visually sumptuous feast, perhaps the most beautifully poetic wuxia film ever made. Inspired by a chuanqi story by Pei Xing, The Assassin is set during the ninth-century Tang dynasty, on the brink of war between Weibo and the Royal Court. Exiled from her home since she was ten, Nie Yinniang (Hou muse Shu Qi) has returned thirteen years later, now an expert assassin, trained by the nun (Fang-Yi Sheu) who raised her to be a cold-blooded killer out for revenge. After being unable to execute a hit out of sympathy for her target’s child, Yinniang is ordered to kill Tian Ji’an (Chang Chen), her cousin and the man to whom she was betrothed as a young girl, as a lesson to teach her not to let personal passions rule her. But don’t worry about the plot, which is far from clear and at times impossible to follow. Instead, glory in Hou’s virtuosity as a filmmaker; he was named Best Director at Cannes for The Assassin, a meditative journey through a fantastical medieval world. Hou and cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-Bing craft each frame like it’s a classical Chinese painting, a work of art unto itself. The camera moves slowly, if at all, as the story plays out in long shots, in both time and space, with very few close-ups and no quick cuts, even during the martial arts fights in which Yinniang displays her awesome skills. Hou often lingers on her face, which shows no outward emotion, although her soul is in turmoil. Hou evokes Andrei Tarkovsky, Akira Kurosawa, Ang Lee, and Zhang Yimou as he takes the viewer from spectacular mountains and river valleys to lush interiors (the stunning sets and gorgeous costumes, bathed in red, black, and gold, are by Hwarng Wern-ying), with silk curtains, bamboo and birch trees, columns, and other elements often in the foreground, along with mist, fog, and smoke, occasionally obscuring the proceedings, lending a surreal quality to Hou’s innate realism.

There are long passages of silence or with only quiet, barely audible music by composer Lim Giong, with very little dialogue, as rituals are performed, baths are prepared, and a bit of black magic takes place. The opening scenes, set around a breathtaking mountain abbey in Inner Mongolia, are shot in black-and-white with no soundtrack, like a silent film, harkening to cinema’s past as well as Yinniang’s; when it switches over to color, fiery reds take over as the credits begin. Throughout the film, the nun wears white and the assassin wears black, in stark contrast to the others’ exquisitely colorful attire; however, the film is not about good and evil but something in between. Shu and Cheng, who played a trio of lovers in Hou’s Three Times, seem to be barely acting in The Assassin, immersing themselves in their characters; Hou (The Puppetmaster, Flowers of Shanghai) gives all of his cast, professional and nonprofessional alike, a tremendous amount of freedom, and it results here in scenes that feel real despite our knowing better. Sure, a touch more plot explication would have been nice, but that was not what Hou was after; he wanted to create a mood, an atmosphere, to transport the actors and the audience to another time and place, and he has done that marvelously. The Assassin is a treasure chest of memorable moments that rewards multiple viewings. I’ve seen it twice and can’t wait to see it again — but I’ve given up trying to figure out exactly what it’s about, instead reveling in its immense, contemplative beauty. Hou’s previous full-length film was 2007’s Flight of the Red Balloon; it’s now been eight years since The Assassin, so here’s hoping his next film is on its way.

King Hu’s A Touch of Zen is a trippy journey toward enlightenment

A TOUCH OF ZEN (King Hu, 1969/1971)
Sunday, April 30, 1:00
metrograph.com

King Hu’s 1969 highly influential wuxia classic, A Touch of Zen, is a three-hour epic that features an impossible-to-figure-out plot, a goofy romance, wicked-cool weaponry, an awesome Buddhist monk, a bloody massacre, and action scenes that clearly involve the overuse of trampolines. Still, it’s great fun, even if it is way too long. (The film, which was initially shown in two parts, earned a special technical prize at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival.) Shih Jun stars as Ku Shen Chai, a local calligrapher and scholar who is extremely curious when the mysterious Ouyang Nin (Tin Peng) suddenly show up in town. It turns out that Ouyang is after Miss Yang (Hsu Feng) to exact “justice” for the corrupt Eunuch Wei, who is out to kill her entire family. Hu (Come Drink with Me, Dragon Gate Inn) fills the film with long, poetic establishing shots of fields and the fort, using herky-jerky camera movements (that might or might not have been done on purpose) and throwing in an ultra-trippy psychedelic mountain scene that is about as 1960s as it gets. Winner of the Technical Grand Prize at Cannes, A Touch of Zen is ostensibly about Ku’s journey toward enlightenment, but it’s also about so much more, although I’m not completely sure what that is.

PLAN 75

Michi Kakutani (Chieko Baisho) faces the end of her life sooner than she wants to in Plan 75

PLAN 75 (Chie Hayakawa, 2022)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, April 21
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.kimstim.com

In March 2020, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, sixty-nine-year-old Texas lt. gov. Dan Patrick told Tucker Carlson on Fox News, “No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’ And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.” Many people agreed that in order to protect the US economy, it was acceptable to let senior citizens die from the coronavirus.

Japanese writer-director Chie Hayakawa takes that concept to the next level in her debut feature, the melancholic, gorgeously photographed Plan 75, opening April 21 at IFC Center.

Expanded from a short film she made for the 2018 omnibus Ten Years Japan, in which five directors made works set ten years in the future, Plan 75 unfolds in a near dystopia where the Japanese government, in order to combat the inconvenient truth that the population is aging at a potentially unsustainable rate, offers all citizens seventy-five and older the opportunity to be euthanized, no questions asked, in exchange for one thousand dollars and free cremation, among other lures.

“The surplus of seniors is draining Japan’s economy and taking a heavy toll on the young generation,” a young man with a rifle narrates at the beginning of the film. “Surely the elderly don’t wish to be a blight on our lives. The Japanese have a long, proud history of sacrificing themselves to benefit the country. I pray that my courageous act will trigger discussion and a future that’s brighter for this nation.”

Yôko Narimiya (Yumi Kawai) takes a job at a government euthanasia company in Plan 75

Plan 75 evokes elements of Richard Fleischer’s 1973 thriller Soylent Green, in which the government provides extravagantly organized assisted suicide, and Michael Anderson’s 1976 sci-fi flick Logan’s Run, in which citizens are not permitted to live past the age of thirty.

Legendary actress and singer Chieko Baisho is mesmerizing as Michi Kakutani, an elegant seventy-eight-year-old woman with no family. After losing her job as a hotel maid, she tries to find other employment, but it’s difficult at her age. Running out of money, she worries that she might soon be homeless.

She then finds out about the government program called Plan 75; cheerful banners and television commercials are pervasive. Several of her friends, including Ineko (Hisako Ôkata), are interested in the proposition, especially the part that comes with a free stay in a resort. But Michi is not ready to die.

Hiromu Okabe (Hayato Isomura) is a bright and enthusiastic young man who is one of Plan 75’s leading salesmen. He eagerly signs up senior citizens for Plan 75 with a smile on his face, believing it is a good thing for everyone. But when his uncle, Yukio Okabe (Taka Takao), shows up to enroll in the program, he starts having second thoughts.

Meanwhile, fellow employee Yôko Narimiya (Yumi Kawai) is assigned to Michi’s case, quickly growing close with the older woman, which is against the rules. And Maria (Stefanie Arianne) is a Filipino caregiver who has come to Japan to make enough money to pay for her ailing daughter’s heart operation; instead of helping sick and elderly people survive, she is now processing their belongings after they are killed by the state, reminiscent of how the Nazis collected the possessions of victims of the gas chambers.

“Humans have no choice about whether to be born, but it would be a good thing if we were able to choose when it’s time to die,” an elderly woman says happily in a commercial in a Plan 75 waiting room that reverses our usual expectations; instead of waiting to see doctors to keep them healthy, these seniors are waiting to die. “Being able to decide how my life will end provided me peace of mind,” the spokeswoman adds.

Plan 75 is a chilling look at where we might be headed; at times it feels like a documentary, its narrative all too believable. Cinematographer Hideho Urata’s camera ranges from close-ups of Baishô’s face, both celebrating and mourning every deep wrinkle, to dark interiors where the elderly slowly go through their meager daily existence and bright exteriors where children play and trains speed by as Michi can only watch.

At one point, after reading a section of the Plan 75 manual, which purports to give older people the chance to die with dignity, Yôko stares accusingly at the audience, implicating us in this frightening example of elder abuse. Hayakawa and Urata then cut to a sunset peeking through a tree next to a bland housing complex, followed by a shot of Michi’s hand, held up to a fading light through the window, examining each bent and crooked finger as she lies on a futon, wondering if she’s made the right choice — or even was given much of one in the first place.

Winner of a Caméra d’Or Special Distinction at Cannes, Plan 75 is a haunting cautionary tale that speaks volumes as to how senior citizens are treated, or mistreated, whether during a global pandemic or just every day, in Japan or elsewhere, including right here in America, where too many politicians consider them excess baggage. And the stunning finale emphasizes that we need to do something about it, and fast.

Hayakawa (Bird, Niagara) will be at IFC Center opening weekend, participating in Q&As on April 21 at 7:00 with Reiko Tahara, April 22 at 7:10 with Risa Morimoto, and April 23 at 4:25 with Kris Montello.

RIALTO AT 25

World premiere of 4K restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville kicks off “Rialto at 25” at MoMA (photo courtesy the Kobal Collection)

RIALTO AT 25
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
April 19 – May 22, $8-$12
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.rialtopictures.com

In 1997, Bruce Goldstein started Rialto Pictures, joined the following year by Adrienne Halpern. For more than a quarter-century, Rialto has been dedicated to reissuing and restoring classic foreign and independent films, both famous and forgotten, often debuting them at Film Forum, where Goldstein has long served as master programmer. MoMA pays tribute to copresidents Goldstein and Halpern with “Rialto at 25,” a five-week series consisting of thirty-one films released by the beloved distribution company, beginning with Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1947 murder mystery, Quai Des Orfèvres, and the world premiere of a brand-new 4K restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 futuristic thriller, Alphaville.

Organized by MoMA Film curator Dave Kehr, the festival also includes Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets, Marcel Carné’s Le Jour Se Lève, Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, Carol Reed’s The Third Man, Joe Dante’s The Howling, and Alberto Cavalcanti’s Went the Day Well?

“I began Rialto Pictures out of sheer frustration. Many classic movies, particularly European films, had no distribution in the United States, with prints either impossible to get or unavailable to repertory cinemas,” Goldstein said in a statement. “And, just as bad, a lot of important classics — like Renoir’s Grand Illusion and Godard’s Breathless — were seen for decades only in miserable 16mm copies, with bad image and sound. By getting the rights to movies like these myself, I could make brand new 35mm prints and show them — not just in New York — but in movie theaters across the country.”

Rialto has amassed a profoundly remarkable collection that is well represented in the MoMA series; among the other highlights and surprises are Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (with a seven-minute restored scene), Jules Dassin’s Rififi, Orson Welles’s The Trial, Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein, John Boulting’s Brighton Rock, and Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and That Obscure Object of Desire. In addition, MoMA has created a special forty-five-minute compilation of Rialto trailers.

On April 29, Goldstein will present the illustrated talk “The Art of Subtitles”; several screenings will feature introductions or discussions; and originally commissioned Rialto posters will be on view. Goldstein will introduce Jacques Deray’s La Piscine on April 26 and Dino Risi’s Una Vita Difficile on May 14, translator and subtitler Michael F. Moore will introduce Francesco Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli on April 22, Whit Stillman and actors Dylan Hundley and Carolyn Farina will participate in a discussion following a screening of Metropolitan on April 27, actor Madjid Niroumand will talk about Amir Naderi’s Davandeh with Goldstein after a screening on April 28, and Julien Duvivier’s Panique will be introduced on April 26 by Pierre Simon, the son of Georges Simenon, on whose novel the film is based. You might as well just move in to MoMA from April 19 to May 22, but keep looking over your shoulder.

GUILLERMO DEL TORO: CRAFTING PINOCCHIO

A large-scale Pinocchio hovers over a MoMA hallway (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

GUILLERMO DEL TORO: CRAFTING PINOCCHIO
MoMA, Museum of Modern Art
The Debra and Leon Black Family Film Center
The Paul J. Sachs Galleries
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through April 15, $14-$25 (sixteen and under free)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
crafting pinocchio slideshow

You don’t have to have seen Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning stop-motion-animated Pinocchio or even liked it in order to appreciate the magical “Crafting Pinocchio” exhibition at MoMA, on view for just a few more days. Expect long lines to check out models, maquettes, drawings, dioramas, and video that goes behind the scenes of the making of the film, which started out as a chapter book illustrated by Gris Grimly.

“After the book was published, me and some friends started to develop how this could be a movie. And we came up with a list of directors, and Guillermo was top on the list,” Grimly explains on the audioguide. “Shortly after that, I got a call from a gallery that was selling my artwork, and they said that Guillermo came in and bought a piece of my Pinocchio artwork. And I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ They called him up and we had lunch. And this was 2004, I think. It’s been a long time coming. This has been like twenty some years.”

Doctors examine Pinocchio in scene from Oscar-winning film (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The exhibit is an enticing collection that will bring out the little kid in you. You’ll learn about the creation of such characters as Cricket (voiced by Ewan McGregor), Geppetto (David Bradley), Pinocchio (Gregory Mann), Podesta (Ron Perlman), Dottore (John Turturro), Candlewick (Finn Wolfhard), Spazzatura (Cate Blanchett), the Black Rabbits (Tim Blake Nelson), Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz), the Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton), and Mussolini (Tom Kenny) and encounter scenes set in Geppetto’s home, the doctor’s office, the battlefield, and the circus where Pinocchio performs.

“This is a fable very close to my heart, and one that I think has lived in many incarnations,” del Toro says on the guide. “And I trust the one we’re offering to you is a particularly beautiful one. This is a tale about becoming who you are, not transforming yourself for others, which goes counter to the traditional take on Pinocchio.” The film itself will be screened at MoMA on April 14 and 15 at 3:00.

Exhibit goes behind the scenes of the making of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In the film center downstairs are a number of old copies of Carlo Collodi’s story in multiple languages from around the world, an inside look at the music in del Toro’s movie, and clips and posters from Pinocchio and such other del Toro works as Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and The Devil’s Backbone.

On the audioguide, del Toro adds, “We wanted to create a story about a world that behaves like a puppet and obeys everything they’re told, and a puppet that chooses to be disobedient and finds his own morality, his own soul, and his own humanity by that disobedience.” The MoMA show captures just how del Toro accomplished that.