this week in film and television

YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CLIFF CASHEN: A CHRISTMAS MOVIE TO REMEMBER

Didi (Liz Larsen) and Cliff (Michael Strassner) have a Christmas Eve to remember in The Baltimorons

THE BALTIMORONS
IFC Center, AMC Lincoln Square, Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Brooklyn
Opens Friday, September 5
www.baltimoronsmovie.com

“What’s wrong with you?” dentist Didi asks her emergency patient, Cliff, early in The Baltimorons. He immediately replies, “Everything.”

What’s right with the film? Just about everything.

The Baltimorons is a bittersweet, hilarious escapade from the Duplass Brothers, directed by Jay Duplass and written by Duplass and Baltimore native Michael Strassner. Strassner stars as Cliff Cashen, who, in the first scene, fails pathetically at trying to hang himself in his attic. Six months later, a sober Cliff is driving with his fiancée, Brittany (Olivia Luccardi), to her mother’s house for Christmas Eve dinner. Cliff is an improv comic, but Brittany is worried when fellow comedian Marvin (Rob Phoenix) texts him about participating in a show that night; Cliff has promised Brittany that, as part of his sobriety, he has given up comedy as well as booze.

On his way into the house, he trips over a loose brick and smashes his face against the side of the door, causing significant damage to his mouth and teeth. He finds Dr. Didi (Liz Larsen), apparently the only dentist working on the holiday, and meets her in her office. Cliff might be a bear of a guy, but he is a sensitive man-child who is afraid of needles; it’s also nearly impossible to know when he is telling the truth or joking around.

Upon leaving Didi’s office, Cliff sees that his Cadillac has been towed; with no other options, he accepts an offer from Didi — a divorced mother and grandmother whose ex-husband (Brian Mendes) just got married that morning — to drive him to the impound lot so he can reclaim his car, which was originally his father’s. That leads to a series of extremely funny, moving, and dangerous adventures in which doctor and patient seem stuck together, facing personal and professional challenges that make them take a hard look at who they are and where they are going.

Duplass, who previously worked with his younger brother, Mark Duplass, on such films as The Puffy Chair and Baghead and the series Togetherness, met Strassner through the latter’s Instagram (@strasshola), where Strassner posts wildly unpredictable short videos. They quickly clicked and were soon writing The Baltimorons, which is loosely based on Strassner’s real life. Duplass cast Tony winner Larsen (The Most Happy Fella, Law & Order) after seeing her play matriarch Shelly Pfefferman in A Transparent Musical; Duplass had portrayed one of that character’s children in the hit streaming series. The role of Didi was then adjusted to reflect some elements from Larsen’s life.

It all combines to give the film a realistic feel, with Baltimore a character unto itself; it’s very much a love letter to the city as Jon Bregel’s camera guides us to the since-collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, Federal Hill, the annual Miracle on 34th Street holiday lighting display in Hampden, the Rocket to Venus restaurant, and other locations; there are also several mentions of the Baltimore Ravens and their All-Pro quarterback, Lamar Jackson. (Although the film is not political, it is difficult to think of the National Guard and other military being sent in to save this lovely city.)

Strassner, who played Snoopy in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown when he was in the seventh grade, is a veteran of the Groundlings improv group and has appeared on numerous sitcoms, but he instantly takes hold of the film; it’s virtually impossible not to connect with Cliff, a complex gentle giant who went through a bad time and is now trying to reframe his life. Strassner balances solemnity and gravity with humor and Cliff’s infectious world view; although it essentially makes no sense for Didi to keep sticking to Cliff, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t be exactly what we would do if we were in her situation, and Larsen (The Most Happy Fella, Law & Order) excels as the distraught doctor, melding her obvious and necessary cautiousness with an inner desire to break free, to gain control of a life that is getting away from her. You don’t have to be a sober comic or a lonely dentist to appreciate, understand, and, most important, want to spend more and more time with these two oddly matched people in search of something else.

The Baltimorons is a Christmas movie to remember, worthy of a place in the holiday canon; Jordan Seigel’s charming score even recalls Vince Guaraldi’s music for A Charlie Brown Christmas. There’s a reason why the film won the Audience Award at four different festivals. See it now, but add it to your annual Christmas list as well.

The Baltimorons opens September 5 at IFC Center, AMC Lincoln Square, and Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Brooklyn; Duplass, Strassner, and Larsen will be at IFC for Q&As following the 7:15 screenings on Friday (moderated by athlete, author, and podcaster Rich Roll) and the 4:40 show on Saturday (moderated by actor David Krumholz); they will also be at Alamo for Saturday’s 7:00 show.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

IFC AT TWENTY: BOYHOOD AND ANTICHRIST

BOYHOOD

Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) and Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) take a look at their lives in Richard Linklater’s brilliant Boyhood

BOYHOOD (Richard Linklater, 2014)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Sunday, August 31, 1:45
Monday, September 1, 11:15 am
Wednesday, September 3, 1:00
www.ifccenter.com

IFC Center is celebrating its twentieth anniversary by screening twenty films, one from each year it’s been open. The first part of the series runs through September 4 and includes 2006’s Inland Empire, 2007’s Fay Grim, 2009’s Antichrist, and 2014’s Boyhood.

Since 2002, Austin auteur Richard Linklater has made a wide range of successful films, from the family-friendly School of Rock and Bad News Bears to the second and third parts of the more adult Before series (Before Sunset, Before Midnight), with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, in addition to the Philip K. Dick thriller A Scanner Darkly and the Jack Black black comedy Bernie. But during that entire period he was also making one of the grandest films ever about childhood, the deceptively simple yet mind-blowingly complex Boyhood. The work follows Mason Evans Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) as he goes from six years old to eighteen, maturing for real as both the actor and the character grow up before our eyes. As the film begins, Mason, his older sister, Samantha (Linklater’s real-life daughter, Lorelei), and their mother, Olivia (Oscar winner Patricia Arquette), are preparing to move to Houston just as their usually absent father, Mason Sr. (Hawke), returns from a job in Alaska, supposedly ready to be a more regular part of their lives. But his emotional immaturity leads to divorce, and Mason Jr. spends the next dozen years dealing with school, stepfathers, and the normal machinations of everyday life, including sex, drugs, rock and roll, and, for him, a determination from an early age to become an artist. Along the way, his sister and parents experience significant changes as well as they all learn lessons about life, love, and loss.

BOYHOOD

Olivia (Patricia Arquette) reads to children Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) and Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) in Boyhood

To make the film, the cast and crew met every year for three or four days of shooting, with writer-director Linklater moving the story ahead by incorporating real elements from Coltrane’s life that add to the natural ease and flow of the story. Despite the obvious difficulties of maintaining continuity over a dozen years, cinematographers Lee Daniel and Shane Kelly and editor Sandra Adair do a masterful job of keeping the narrative right on track. It’s breathtaking to see Mason Jr. go upstairs in one scene, then come downstairs a year later, ready for something new, dressed slightly differently, with a little more facial hair, to signal the change in time. (Linklater also uses the soundtrack to note the passing years, with songs by Coldplay, the Hives, Cat Power, Gnarls Barkley, the Flaming Lips, and others.) Mason Jr.’s unique relationship with each parent and his sister is utterly believable, complete with all the pluses and minuses that entails; at one point, Lorelei, tired of being in the movie, asked her father to kill off her character, and even that energy is apparent onscreen. In addition to Coltrane’s career-making performance, Hawke and Arquette are sensational, doing something no other actors before them have ever done. You won’t be bored for a second of this two-hour, forty-minute journey with a relatively average American family that helps define the modern human condition like no other single film before it. “Photography is truth . . . and cinema is truth twenty-four times a second,” Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor) tells Véronica Dreyer (Anna Karina) in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat. With Boyhood, that statement has rarely been so true. Nominated for six Academy Awards, Boyhood is screening in the IFC Center series “20 Films for 20 Years” on August 31 and September 1 and 3, the first two on 35mm.

Lars von Trier’s Antichrist is yet another controversial work by the Danish filmmaker

ANTICHRIST (Lars von Trier, 2009)
IFC Center
Saturday, August 30, 7:05
Monday, September 1, 9:40
Wednesday, September 3, 4:25
Thursday, September 4, 11:15 am
www.ifccenter.com

Generally, Danish Dogme practitioner Lars von Trier makes films that critics and audiences alike are either repulsed by or deeply love. Controversial works such as Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark, and Dogville win international awards while also driving people out of theaters. In fact, at the New York Film Festival press conference for Antichrist, he was asked how he feels when no one walks out on his work: “Then I have failed,” he replied with a sly grin. Well, there are sure to be many walkouts during Antichrist, a harrowing tale of grief, pain, and despair that begins with a gorgeously shot, visually graphic sex scene followed by a tragic accident. The rest of the film details how the unnamed couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) deal with the loss of their young child; a therapist, he opts to treat her more as a patient than as his wife, a highly questionable decision that threatens to tear them apart — both psychologically and physically, as the film turns into an extremely violent horror flick in the final scenes.

Somehow, I found myself pretty much right in the middle of this one, neither loving it nor hating it while admiring it greatly despite its odd meanderings, loose holes, sappy dialogue, and occasionally awkward scenarios. In certain ways, it’s a bizarre amalgamation of Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (and various other Stephen King stories), Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Richard Donner’s The Omen, Robert Wise’s Audrey Rose, and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Or something like that. Antichrist is screening in the IFC Center series “20 Films for 20 Years” on August 30 and September 1, 3, and 4, the last at an ungodly 11:15 am

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.].

IDOLATROUS PROCESSIONS, PROVOCATIONS, DEMIURGIC NERVATURES, AND DISTANT PRESENCES: THE QUAY BROTHERS RETURN WITH SANATORIUM

The Quay Brothers return to Film Forum with their first feature-length film in twenty years, another foray into the unknown and unseen

SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS (the Quay Brothers, 2024)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, August 29
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

As if a new film from the Quay Brothers is not already reason enough to celebrate, the rejoicing can escalate because their latest, Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass, is another masterful addition to their forty-year career.

Philadelphia-born, England-based identical twins Stephen and Timothy Quay make unique, complex stop-motion animated works that incorporate elements of German expressionism, silent film tropes, noir, and psychoanalysis, creating dark, heavily atmospheric tales that push the boundaries of storytelling conventions, using eerie, fragile dolls and puppets along with mysterious live action and spectral experimental music. They started out in 1985 with the eleven-minute Little Songs of the Chief Officer of Hunar Louse, or This Unnameable Little Broom, Being a Largely Disguised Reduction of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tableau II, a dreamlike fantasia involving a creepy, clownlike figure surrounded by doors and drawers that open and close by themselves and windows that offer views into other worlds. They followed that up with the 1986 classic Street of Crocodiles, based on Bruno Schulz’s 1934 short story collection and inspired by the work of Czech filmmaker, artist, and playwright Jan Švankmajer; the twenty-minute opus revolutionized the genre, focusing on a man, dressed like a magician, who looks into a strange contraption that leads him into a portentous alternate universe where inanimate objects move and clocks have no hands.

Only their third feature-length film — after 1994’s Institute Benjamenta and 2004’s The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes — Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass, based on the 1937 novel and other writings by Schulz, is a natural progression from those early days, a kind of summation of everything that came before it. The narrative is set at Sanatorium Karpaty in the foothills of the Karpathian Mountains, where patient J (Zenaida Yanowsky) is convalescing. We first meet Adela I (Allison Bell), a young woman peering around suspiciously, her knee blocking part of her face as we listen to a scratchy 1936 Radio Archive recording of a voice explaining, “Sometimes, at the opening . . . of a street someone turned to the sky half a face, with one frightened and shining eye, and listened to the rumble of space.” Next we see, through the pupil in a large, disembodied eye, three men in top hats, two chimneysweeps (Andrzej Kłak and Leszek Bzdyl) and an auctioneer (Tadeusz Janiszewski). The auctioneer is selling such unusual items as “Twin Quail eggs of supernatural size, laid during the Solar Eclipse . . . of 12 May 1706? Or three petrified ribs of a Siren . . . together with her hands found in the Royal Menagerie of Fredensborg . . . in the year 27 September 1674. Or an Iron Harpoon . . . struck by lightning! Or the Warm Blood of Bees! Or the Hour of your Death!”

Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass is another audiovisual marvel by the Brothers Quay

The auctioneer, who also refers to himself as a flogger and a pedlar, returns to his sparse office, where his assistant (Wioletta Kopańska) shows him a new item that has been delivered for him to sell; in his booming thespian voice, he reads: “Forbiddingly called Maquette for the Sepulchre of a Dead Retina, it is a singularly decrepit but ornate wooden box having the appearance of a miniature funerary cabinet with a skilfully hidden secret drawer allegedly containing the deceased retina of its original owner. Penetrating the exterior skin of this box are seven randomly placed lenses with tiny adjustable screws. Each lens holds a glimpse of one of the seven final images that the said eye beheld. And when positioned correctly, once a year, on the 19th of November, the sun’s rays are aligned to strike the dead retina — thereby liquefying it, anointing each of the seven images and setting them in motion.”

The box suddenly comes to life, and the auctioneer peers into one of the lenses and sees Józef, a doll in a top hat who wanders through an old, ghostly train, going from coach to coach as doors and secret entrances swing open and closed and ghastly figures appear and disappear. In voiceover, the auctioneer narrates the proceedings as Józef meets the multiarmed Dr. Gotard, who is caring for Józef’s ailing father. Józef encounters a broken hourglass, a dilapidated bridge, a buzzing neon sign in red and blue, used chalk for hire, and old mirrors as he makes his way through netherworld vestibules.

The story occasionally cuts back to live action with real actors, where Józef (Kłak) is told by the chambermaid (Kopańska) that it is always night there. He peers through a keyhole and watches what might be some kind of S&M encounter, bathed in a golden light. A horde of men (Bzdyl, Robert Martyniak, Łukasz Łucjan, Marek Jasek) are tantalized by Adela II (Kopańska). Back in his doll form, Józef is led to a crumbling theater for one person; his seat is Loge 7A, which is restricted view.

It all combines for a storytelling tour de force, zeroing in on the voyeuristic nature of humanity, from how we watch movies and theater to how we interact with one another in real life and fantasy.

Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass unfolds in seven sections, including “Provocations Found in Evening Corridors: Hosanna!,” “Distant Presences Traced Around the Circumference of a Knee,” “The Idolatrous Procession,” and “Travels in the Last World.” It’s a Victorian steampunk dark nightmare that is like an ASMR fan’s dream. The attention to detail in every shot, every sound is remarkable, resulting in a hypnotic audiovisual experience. The Quays are credited with the puppets, décors, animation, and cinematography; the spectacular production design is by Agata Trojak, with sets by Anna Podhajny, props by Mateusz Niedzielak, costumes by Dorothée Roqueplo, live-action cinematography by Bartosz Bieniek, and sound by Joakim Sundström and the Quays.

Timothy Nelson’s original score features electronic noise, propulsive drumming, and spectral tones, accompanied by additional music by Alfred Schnittke performed by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. The methods employed by the Brothers Quay are so dazzling that their mind-blowing sets were on display in the fall 2009 exhibit “Dormitorium: Film Décors by the Quay Brothers” at Parsons the New School for Design, and they were honored with the wide-ranging 2012–13 MoMA retrospective “Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets.”

Not even the most serious students of Freud and Jung will make sense of everything as the film investigates concepts of time and space, of life and death in ways that both chill and thrill. (In their director comments, the Quays call Sanatorium “an exploration of motifs and themes taken from the mytho-poetic writings of Bruno Schulz integrating both puppets and live-action to score the demiurgic nervature of Schulz’s 13th apocryphal month in the Regions of the Great Heresy.”) As they have done in This Unnameable Little Broom, Street of Crocodiles, and such other shorts as The Comb, The Phantom Museum: Random Forays into the Vaults of Sir Henry Wellcome’s Medical Collection, Metamorphosis, Through the Weeping Glass: On the Consolations of Life Everlasting (Limbos & Afterbreezes in the Mütter Museum), and The Doll’s Breath — some of which are documentaries — they invite viewers into fantastical, unimaginable realms and dimensions that are as confounding as they are beautiful, as unnerving as they are intensely involving and satisfying.

Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass opens August 29 at Film Forum; each screening will be preceded by a specially recorded introduction by the Quay Brothers. The 6:10 show on Friday will be introduced by Literary Hub editor Olivia Rutigliano.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE SITE WHERE IT HAPPENED: HAMILTON SING-A-LONG AT THE OLD STONE HOUSE

Fans can sing along to the Hamilton movie at the place where the Battle of Brooklyn happened

HAMILTON SING-A-LONG
Old Stone House & Washington Park
336 Third St., Brooklyn
Thursday, August 14, free with RSVP, 7:30
theoldstonehouse.org

Every summer, the Old Stone House commemorates the August 27, 1776, Battle of Brooklyn, the first military engagement following the signing of the Declaration of Independence on August 2 at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. This year the historic site will be hosting “Revolutionary Brooklyn,” including walking tours, a short theatrical farce, a remembrance ceremony, a Constitution handwriting session, and a screening of the 2020 film Hamilton, a live stage recording of the smash 2015 Broadway musical that won eleven Tony Awards and is still running at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.

Directed by Thomas Kail and written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the film features Miranda as Alexander Hamilton, Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr, Phillipa Soo as Eliza Hamilton, Renée Elise Goldsberry as Angelica Schuyler, Christopher Jackson as George Washington, Daveed Diggs as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, Anthony Ramos as John Laurens and Philip Hamilton, Okieriete Onaodowan as Hercules Mulligan and James Madison, and Jonathan Groff as King George III. On August 14 at 7:30, fans can come to Washington Park and sing along to such favorite numbers as “My Shot,” “Non-Stop,” and “The Room Where It Happens.” Attendees can bring their own lawn chair or blanket and party on the exact place where the Battle of Brooklyn happened 249 years ago; admission is free with advance RSVP.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

TIME IS ON HIS SIDE: CELEBRATING OLIVIER ASSAYAS AT METROGRAPH

OLIVIER ASSAYAS: OUT OF TIME
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Series begins August 8
metrograph.com

In conjunction with the theatrical release of his latest film, the semiautobiographical Suspended Time, Metrograph will be screening a half-dozen of French writer-director Olivier Assayas’s works, which range from ultracool flicks to boring dramas, but they’re almost always visually stunning, filled with cinematic references and hip music — as well as such stars as Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Mathieu Amalric, Maggie Cheung, and future director Mia Hansen-Løve, who was Assayas’s partner for fifteen years. The series kicks off August 8 with a sneak preview of the new film in addition to 2018’s Non-Fiction and continues with such other tales as 1998’s Late August, Early September and 2000’s Les Destinées sentimentales.

Metrograph is celebrating the work of Olivier Assayas in retrospective including Summer Hours

SUMMER HOURS (L’HEURE D’ÉTÉ) (Olivier Assayas, 2008)
Friday, August 15, 6:15
Sunday, August 17, 5:35
metrograph.com
www.summerhours.com.au

At their annual family gathering, Frédéric (Charles Berling), Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), and Jérémie (Jérémie Renier) are celebrating their mother’s seventy-fifth birthday. But Hélène (Edith Scob) does not care about the present; instead, she is more concerned with preserving the past and preparing for the future. She pulls aside her oldest, Frédéric (Assayas’s on-screen alter ego), to tell him what to do with her belongings after she’s gone, but he is not ready to think about that. Her house is more like a museum, filled with valuable works of art and furniture that were collected by her uncle, a famous painter who died thirty years before. Frédéric would prefer to keep the house intact, donating a few items to the Musee d’Orsay and saving the rest for the next generation, but Adrienne and Jérémie don’t necessarily feel the same way, and Frédéric’s and Jérémie’s kids fail to see any value in the pieces, including two oil paintings by Camille Corot, begrudgingly noting that they’re from a different era. While Frédéric, a professor who has written a controversial book about the state of the economy, attaches personal memories to each object, Adrienne, a successful designer in New York, is more interested in the functionality of things, and Jérémie, who manages a company that profits from cheap labor in China, sees only monetary value. As the three siblings discuss what to do with their mother’s estate, relationships come into focus, and a long-held secret emerges.

Written and directed by Olivier Assayas (Clean, Demonlover), Summer Hours, which was selected for the 2008 New York Film Festival, is a thoughtful, intelligent slice-of-life story that avoids overbearing cliches and melodramatic moments; there are no blow-ups or overemotional scenes. Instead, the family deals with its situation directly and matter-of-factly, a sort of French Cherry Orchard for the twenty-first century. However, Assayas does include far too many red herrings, little flourishes of cinematic language that seem to set something up that never comes full circle. The project was initiated by the Musee d’Orsay, which had commissioned a group of international directors to make short films related to the institution’s holdings. Assayas’s friend and colleague Hou Hsiao Hsien ended up making the full-length Flight of the Red Balloon, which also starred Binoche. Although the project later fell apart, Assayas combined the idea with the worsening condition of his mother, resulting in a bittersweet and very personal work.

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart mix fact and fiction in Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (Olivier Assayas, 2014)
Friday, August 15, 8:15
Saturday, August 16, 5:25
metrograph.com

The related concepts of time and reality wind through Olivier Assayas’s beautifully poetic, melancholy Clouds of Sils Maria much like actual snakelike clouds slither through the twisting Maloja Pass in the Swiss Alps, as life imitates art and vice versa. Juliette Binoche stars as Maria Enders, a famous French actress who is on her way to Zurich to accept an award for her mentor, playwright Wilhelm Melchior, who eschews such mundane ceremonies. But while en route, Maria and her personal assistant, the extremely attentive and capable Valentine (Kristen Stewart), learn that Wilhelm has suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, and Maria considers turning back, especially when she later finds out that Henryk Wald (Hanns Zischler), an old nemesis, will be there to pay homage to Wilhelm as well, but she decides to go ahead after all. At a cocktail party, Maria meets with hot director Klaus Diesterweg (Lars Eidinger), who is preparing a new stage production of Wilhelm and Maria’s first big hit, The Maloja Snake, but this time Maria would play Helena, an older woman obsessed with ambitious eighteen-year-old Sigrid, the role she originally performed twenty years earlier, to great acclaim. Klaus is planning to cast Lindsay Lohan-like troublemaking star and walking tabloid headline Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace Moretz) as Sigrid, which does not thrill Maria as her past and present meld together in an almost dreamlike narrative punctuated by the music of Handel and cinematographer Yorick Le Saux’s gorgeous shots of vast mountain landscapes.

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

Valentine (Kristen Stewart) and Maria (Juliette Binoche) go in search of the Maloja Snake in the Swiss Alps

Clouds of Sils Maria resonates on many levels, both inside and outside of the main plot and the film itself. Assayas (Boarding Gate, Something in the Air) cowrote André Téchiné’s 1983 film, Rendez-Vous, which was Binoche’s breakthrough; Assayas and Binoche wouldn’t work together again until his 2008 film Summer Hours, similar to the relationship between Wilhelm and Maria. Meanwhile, the story of the play-within-the-film is echoed by the relationship between Maria and Valentine, who are having trouble separating the personal from the professional. It is often difficult to know when the two women are practicing lines and when they are talking about their “real” lives. Binoche (Blue, Caché) is simply extraordinary as Maria, a distressed and anxious woman who is suddenly facing getting older somewhat sooner than expected, while Stewart (The Twilight Saga, On the Road) became the first American woman to win a French César, for Best Supporting Actress, for her sensitive portrayal of Valentine, a strong-willed young woman who might or might not be holding something back. The scenes between the two are riveting as they venture in and out of the reality of the film, their onscreen chemistry building and building till it’s at last ready to ignite. Art, life, cinema, theater, fiction, and reality all come together in Clouds of Sils Maria, as Maria, Assayas, and Binoche take stock of where they’ve been, where they are, and where they’re going.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FREEDOM FROM THE YOKE OF LANGUAGE: THE MUSICIANS

Astrid (Valérie Donzelli) is determined to stage a special one-of-a-kind concert in The Musicians

THE MUSICIANS (LES MUSICIENS) (Grégory Magne, 2024)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, August 8
212-529-6799
www.cinemavillage.com
www.outsiderpictures.us

“Music is alive. To play it, you need to live it,” composer Charlie Beaumont (Frédéric Pierrot) says in Grégory Magne’s beautiful French comedy-drama The Musicians, a cinematic symphony not just for classical music lovers.

The film opens with a pan of what appears to be a regular-size interior wooden room but turns out to be the inside of a cello, soon confirmed by luthier François (François Ettori) to be the cherished Stradivarius San Domenico, which is up for auction. Determined to carry out her deceased father’s longtime wish, Astrid Carlson (Valérie Donzelli) wants to acquire the instrument to add to the two Stradivarius violins (including the 1713 Wodyka) and viola the family already owns and organize a concert in which four of the best musicians in the world will perform a specially commissioned piece as a kind of one-time-only string quartet supergroup, to be broadcast live around the world from a relatively undistinguished church chosen by her father. Her brother (Nicolas Bridet) is against it from the start, claiming the foundation cannot afford the cello and should instead be selling off the other three instruments, but Astrid won’t take no for an answer.

She pursues violinist George Massaro (Mathieu Spinosi), a lone wolf who plays by his own rules; blind second violinist Peter Nicolescu (Daniel Garlitsky) and cellist Lise Carvalho (Marie Vialle), who have a past that might prevent them from teaming up; and violist Apolline Dessartre (Emma Ravier), a sexy young social media starlet. The four instruments may have been made from the same tree, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy for Astrid to get the musicians on the same page. Things go so poorly at first that she tries to enlist Charlie for help; the reclusive, dour composer is initially not interested but eventually comes around, although he has his doubts from the start that this is a good idea.

A temporary classical supergroup faces professional and personal challenges in symphonic film

Although the four musicians are exceptional, the concert is primarily about the Stradivari. At one point, when the quartet is off to a rehearsal, Charlie is surprised to see a motorcade pulling away. “A car for each musician . . . Quite a heavy carbon footprint,” he says. Astrid responds, “They can’t travel together. Request from the insurance companies.” Charlie ponders, “Just like royalty. Two heirs should never fly on the same flight.” To which Astrid clarifies, “I meant the instruments.”

Over the course of one week before the concert, egos clash and tempers explode, making it seem like this impossible performance might indeed be impossible.

The Musicians features a marvelous original score by Grégoire Hetzel, who has composed music for films by Arnaud Desplechin, Mathieu Amalric, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, cowrote the opera La Chute de Fukuyama, and penned the novel Le Vert Paradis. The soundtrack is supplemented with pieces by Mozart, Bach, Fauré, and Lead Belly.

French actress, director, and screenwriter Donzelli (Martha . . . Martha, The Queen of Hearts) is tender and vulnerable as Astrid, the emotional center of the narrative; everything is seen through her eyes. But César-nominated French film, television, and theater star Pierrot is sensational as Charlie, a deeply conflicted man who is uncomfortable in his own skin. “I started making music to free myself . . . from the yoke of language,” he says poetically even as he appears trapped. (His character is perhaps named after jazz saxophonist Charlie Beaumont, as Pierrot is a jazz aficionado who plays the clarinet, and there are elements of jazz in the way Charlie approaches his music.)

Moscow-born violinist and pianist Garlitsky (Paul and Paulette Take a Bath, Chez Maupassant), French equestrian, mezzo-soprano, and violinist Ravier (Two Sons, A Private Life), French violinist Spinosi (La Mélodie, Les Souvenirs), and French theater director Vialle (Julie est amoureuse, La parenthèse enchantée) form a wonderful, fully believable foursome, each of them a classically trained musician in real life; the youngest of the group, Ravier, is in fact active on social media, posting photos of herself in a bikini, just like her character does in the movie, upsetting the more private George.

Magne (Vingt-quatre heures par jour de mer, Perfumes) conducts the proceedings with expert precision, using his experience making fiction films and documentaries to give the film a naturalistic air. Lovingly photographed by Pierre Cottereau and intricately edited by Béatrice Herminie with exquisite sound design by Nicolas Cantin, Daniel Sobrino, Fanny Martin, and Olivier Goinard, The Musicians is a mellifluous, affectionate, sweet-natured tale that encourages audiences to free themselves from the ever-present yoke of language.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

LEGACY, MEMORY, AND IMPERMANENCE: CELEBRATING MEREDITH MONK AT IFC

Meredith Monk looks at her past, present, and future in Billy Shebar’s celebratory and deeply affecting documentary

MONK IN PIECES: A CONCEPT ALBUM (Billy Shebar, 2025)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
July 24–31
www.ifccenter.com
monkinpieces.com

Near the beginning of Billy Shebar’s revelatory documentary, Monk in Pieces, composer Philip Glass explains that Meredith Monk “was a self-contained theater company. She, amongst all of us, I think, was the uniquely gifted one — is the uniquely gifted one.” It’s an important correction because Monk, at eighty-three, is still hard at work, creating live performances and films that defy categorization.

While several of her earliest projects were met with derision in critical circles, today she is revered for her remarkable output, although it is still impossible to put her into any kind of box. At one point in the documentary, a chorus of Monk scholars sings her praises; one says, “She’s achieved so much, has received so many accolades, and yet she’s this unknown,” a second notes, “She kind of falls through the cracks of music history,” and a third admits, “We don’t know how to talk about her.”

Written, directed, and produced by Shebar — whose wife, coproducer Katie Geissinger, has been performing with Monk since 1990 — and David Roberts, Monk in Pieces does a wonderful job of righting those wrongs, celebrating her artistic legacy while she shares private elements of her personal and professional life. Born and raised in Manhattan, Monk details her vision problem, known as strabismus, in which she is unable to see out of both eyes simultaneously in three dimensions, which led her to concentrate on vocals and the movement of her physical self. She studied Dalcroze Eurhythmics: “All musical ideas come from the body; I think that’s where I’m coming from,” she says. All these decades later, her distinctive choreography and wordless tunes are still like nothing anyone else does.

Meredith Monk shares a special moment with her beloved turtle, Neutron

Unfolding at a Monk-like unhurried pace, the ninety-five-minute documentary is divided into thematic chapters based on her songs, including “Dolmen Music,” “Double Fiesta,” “Memory Song,” “Turtle Dreams,” and “Teeth Song,” while exploring such presentations as Juice (1969), the first theatrical event to be held at the Guggenheim; Education of the Girlchild (1973), in which a woman ages in reverse; Quarry (1976), a three-part opera about an American child sick in bed during WWII; Impermanence (2006), inspired by the sudden death of her partner, Mieke von Hook; and her masterwork, Atlas (1991), in which the Houston Grand Opera worries about her numerous requests and production costs, whether the piece will be ready in time, and if it even can be considered opera. There are also clips from Ellis Island, Book of Days, Facing North, and Indra’s Net, her latest show, which was staged at Park Ave. Armory last fall. In addition, Monk reads from her journals in scenes with playful animation by Paul Barritt.

Monk opened up her archives for the filmmakers, so Shebar, Roberts, and editor Sabine Krayenbühl incorporate marvelous photos and video from throughout Monk’s career, along with old and new interviews. “It was her voice that was so extraordinary, not only the different kind of sounds she could make, but the imagination she was using in producing the sound . . . totally individual,” Merce Cunningham says. WNYC New Sounds host John Schaefer gushes, “I don’t know when words like multimedia and interdisciplinary began to become in vogue, but Meredith was all of those things.” Her longtime friend and collaborator Ping Chong offers, “She had to fight to be acknowledged in the performing arts world because critics were saying that what she was doing was nonsensical, was crazy, was not serious; in a way, it’s a fight to survive. Pain is where art comes from. . . . Art has to come out of need. And now she’s an old master.”

And Björk, who recorded Monk’s “Gotham Lullaby,” touts, “Meredith’s melody making is like a timeless door that’s opened, like a gateway to the ancient is found. It definitely affected my DNA. . . . Her loft that she has lived in for half a century is an oasis in a toxic environment.” Among the other collaborators who chime in are longtime company member Lanny Harrison; composer Julia Wolfe; and David Byrne, for whom she created the opening scene of his 1986 film, True Stories, and who says he learned from Monk that “you can do things without words and it still has meaning, it still has an emotional connection.”

Some of the most beautiful moments of the film transpire in Monk’s loft, where she tends to her beloved forty-two-year-old turtle named Neutron, puts stuffed animals on her bed, meditates while staring at windows lined with Tibetan prayer flags, composes a new song, looks into a mirror as she braids her trademark pigtails, and sits at her small kitchen table, eating by herself. Surrounded by plants and personal photographs, she moves about slowly, profoundly alone, comfortable in who she is and what she has accomplished, contemplating what comes next.

“What happens when I’m not here anymore?” Monk, who received the 2014 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama, asks while working with director Yuval Sharon, conductor Francisco J. Núñez, and performer Joanna Lynn Jacobs on a remounting of Atlas for the LA Philharmonic in 2019. “It’s very rare that anybody gets it.”

Monk in Pieces goes a long way toward rectifying that, filling in the cracks, helping define her place in music history.

Monk in Pieces runs July 24-31 at IFC Center; there will be Q&As following the 6:45 screenings on July 24 with Monk, Shebar, and producer Susan Margolin, moderated by Schaefer; on July 25 with Monk, Shebar, and Margolin, moderated by violist Nadia Sirota; and on July 26 with Shebar.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]