Performance artist Marina Abramović is present in more ways than one in intimate documentary
MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ: THE ARTIST IS PRESENT (Matthew Akers, 2012)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, November 24, 7:30
Series continues through January 12
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.marinafilm.com
For forty years, Belgrade-born performance artist Marina Abramović has been presenting cutting-edge, often controversial live works that redefine what art is. For her highly anticipated major career retrospective at MoMA in 2010, “Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present,” which was titled and curated by Klaus Biesenbach, the longtime New Yorker had something extraordinary planned: For the run of the show, from March 14 through May 31, she would spend the entire time the museum was open sitting across from strangers, gazing into each other’s eyes for as long as the visitor wanted. Documentary cinematographer Matthew Akers takes viewers behind the scenes of that remarkable show in his directorial feature debut, also called Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present. Given unlimited access to both Abramović and MoMA, Akers follows the sixty-three-year-old artist as she prepares for the exhibition; heads to a country retreat where she trains several dozen men and women who will “re-perform” some of her older works; and reconnects with former partner and lover Ulay, with whom she first performed many of the pieces in the show. Abramović is seen relaxing in a tub, chopping vegetables, and taking a rare turn behind the wheel of a car, performing relatively menial tasks compared to her art, in which she flagellates herself, carves a star into her stomach, runs into walls, gets slapped by and slaps Ulay, and allows visitors to do whatever they want to her using various objects. The film is at its best when Abramović and Ulay open up about their relationship, get emotional over seeing the old van they used to live in, and discuss their final performance, “The Great Wall Walk,” when they started at opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and walked toward each other over the course of three months, then broke up. While various art critics and curators, including Biesenbach and the Whitney’s Chrissie Iles, sing Abramović’s praises, the film never delves into the more serious meaning behind her art and avoids examining its controversial nature, save for one brief news report decrying its use of nudity. But the long scenes in which Abramović and visitors look into each other’s eyes are absolutely mesmerizing; the elegant Abramović is always steady and stalwart, her concentration intoxicating, inspiring, and more than a little frightening, the opening of her eyes a work of art in and of itself, while the person opposite her tears up, smiles, or pats their heart softly, thanking her for the intense, emotional connection occurring between them, which is essentially what all art is about. Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present is screening November 24 back where it all took place as part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” consisting of exemplary films they believe will stand the test of time; upcoming entries include Amy Berg’s West of Memphis, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, David France’s How to Survive a Plague, and Behn Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild.
After being blacklisted in Hollywood, American auteur Jules Dassin (The Naked City, Brute Force) headed to France, where he was hired to adapt Du Rififi Chez Les Hommes, a crime novel by Auguste le Breton that he made significant changes to, resulting in one of the all-time-great heist films. After spending five years in prison, Tony le Stephanois (Jean Servais) gets out and hooks up again with his old protégé, Jo le Suédois (Carl Möhner), who has settled down with his wife (Janine Darcy) and child (Dominique Maurin) for what was supposed to be a life of domestic tranquility. Joined by Mario Farrati (Robert Manuel), a fun-loving bon vivant with a very sexy girlfriend (Claude Sylvain), and cool and calm safecracker César le Milanais (Dassin, using the pseudonym Perlo Vita), the crew plans a heist of a small Mappin & Webb jewelry store on the Rue de Rivoli. Not content with a quick score, Tony lays the groundwork for a major take, but greed, lust, jealousy, and revenge get in the way in Dassin’s masterful film noir. The complex plan gets even more complicated as César falls for Viviane (Magali Noël), a singer who works at the L’Âge d’Or nightclub, which is owned by Pierre Grutter (Marcel Lupovici), who has taken up with Tony’s former squeeze, Mado (Marie Sabouret), and is trying to save his brother, Louis Grutter (Pierre Grasset), from a serious drug habit. (The club is named for Luis Buñuel’s 1930 film, which featured the same production designer as Rififi, Alexandre Trauner.) As the plot heats up, things threaten to explode in Dassin’s thrilling black-and-white film, which takes a series of unexpected twists and turns as it goes from its remarkably tense and highly influential heist scene to a wild climax. Dassin, who went on to make another of the great caper movies, 1964’s Topkapi, was named Best Director at Cannes for Rififi, which is screening August 26 as part of the MoMA series “Gaumont Thrillers: From Fantômas to A Gang Story,” which continues with such Gaumont-produced films as Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, Maurice Pialat’s Police, Claude Chabrol’s Les Cousins, and Alain Corneau’s Serie noire.
The Coen brothers take their unique brand of dry, black comedy to a whole new level with A Serious Man. Poor Larry Gopnik (a remarkably even-keeled Michael Stuhlbarg) just keeps getting dumped on: His wife, Judith (Sari Lennick), wants to leave him for, of all people, touchy-feely Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed); his brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), keeps hogging the bathroom so he can drain his cyst; his son, Danny (Aaron Wolf), won’t stop complaining that F-Troop isn’t coming in clearly and is constantly on the run from the school drug dealer (Jon Kaminsky Jr.); his daughter, Sarah (Jessica McManus), wants to get a nose job; one of his students (David Kang) has bribed him for a passing grade; his possible tenure appears to be in jeopardy; and he gets no help at all from a series of funnier and funnier rabbis. But Larry keeps on keepin’ on in the Jewish suburbs of Minnesota in 1967, trying to make a go of it as his woes pile higher and higher. Joel and Ethan Coen have crafted one of their best tales yet, nailing the look and feel of the era, from Hebrew school to Bar Mitzvah practice, from office jobs to parking lots, from the Columbia Record Club to transistor radios, from television antennas to the naked neighbor next door. The Coens get so many things right, you won’t mind the handful of mistakes in the film, and because it’s the Coens, who’s to say at least some of those errors weren’t intentional? A Serious Man is a seriously great film, made by a pair of seriously great filmmakers. And while you don’t have to be Jewish and from Minnesota to fall in love with it, it sure can’t hurt. A Serious Man is screening May 3 and 4 at MoMA as part of the series “Focus Features: 10th Anniversary Salute,” which pays tribute to the New York-based distributor responsible for such cutting-edge breakthrough independent films as Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, Fernando Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener, Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, and Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, all of which are part of this festival, which runs May 3-20.