Thursday Movie Picks - The Renaissance

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us on our journey by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!

This week, ladies and gentlemen, we are going back in time. Back in the centuries to a time of magical scientific discoveries, a time of great wealth and horrible poverty, a time of exploration, war, and enlightenment: The Renaissance. I myself am a big fan of renaissance faires (I even dress up on occasion), but people often seem to widen the historical definition of the period a bit to include their favorite costumes or other "middle ages" ephemera. For the purposes of this week, we're using the historically-defined period of the 14th-17th centuries.

Queen Margot (Patrice Chéreau, 1994) Putting the lie to the idea that period films must be stately, buttoned-up, over-serious slogs of costume pageantry, Queen Margot is deliciously dirty and sexy. Isabelle Adjani plays the title role, a Catholic sister of King Charles who is forced to marry another prominent Catholic in order to consolidate power and suppress the uprising of the Protestant Huguenots. But after the bloody St. Barttholomew's Day Massacre, she falls in love with the Protestant La Môle, which may undo everything the neurotic King and his scheming mother Catherine de Medici (a brilliant Virna Lisi) have done. Queen Margot may be close to three hours long, but it doesn't feel it at all, moving along at an involving pace with brilliant performances and some stunning design and cinematography (which I wrote about here, if you're interested).

Dangerous Beauty (Marshall Herskovitz, 1998) Meet Veronica Franco, a beautiful, smart, young Venetian woman. She has everything one needs to get everything one wants in the world... except she's too low-born to marry the man she loves. So her mother suggests that she go into the "family business" and become a courtesan. Upon learning that doing so would grant her access to libraries and education in addition to all the men she could ever dream of sleeping with, she decides to do it. She eventually becomes the top courtesan in Venice, called upon to use her body as well as her mind to influence foreign heads of state... until the Inquisition tries her for witchcraft. This isn't a truly great film, but it's very interesting, looking at the world's oldest profession in a very different light than most other films. And it's based on a biography of Veronica Franco, so much of it is true!

The New World (Terence Malick, 2005) The familiar story of the fateful settling/exploration voyage to America led by John Smith and John Rolfe, where they meet a native chief's daughter, Pocahontas. But this telling is unlike any other you've seen - as you may have guessed upon seeing Malick's name as the director. And look: This is a long, slow, indulgent movie. I'm not going to deny it. However, it is also an unbelievably gorgeous one, possibly the most beautiful looking (and sounding) movie Malick has ever made, in a career not at all lacking in beautiful movies. Appropriately for a movie titled The New World, at times it really feels like you're seeing our planet for the first time, and good God is it a sight to behold.

Thursday Movie Picks - Clones/Doppelgangers

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!

Never fear, I am alive!

I'm just... I've been BUSY the past couple of weeks.

[BEGIN PERSONAL STORY TIME]

You see, three weeks ago, I was offered a new job (YAY! This is a VERY GOOD THING!), and they gave me a start date of May 1. Awesome, right? I get to give two weeks notice and take a week off to relax and start the new job fresh as a daisy, right? WRONG. As it happens, our Annual Benefit at my (then-current, now-former) job was on April 27. And leaving right before the Benefit would just be a massive dick move, which I just couldn't do, even though it meant that my last three weeks there would be hell, because I would be doing extra extra work for the Benefit on top of my normal workload, and on top of that, I would be doing transition/end-of-job work. And then I would go into my new job having only had a weekend to recover. And of course, the Benefit was on a Thursday, so I was crazy busy with a million things and just didn't get the time to participate in this. I would feel worse if I had literally anything to say about cop TV shows.

[END PERSONAL STORY TIME]

But now, I'm back(!) and better than ever(?)!

Only..... are there THAT MANY movies about clones? Hmmmmmmm... let's see how outside the box I can get.....

Possession (Adrzej Zulawski, 1981) I don't even know if I can accurately describe this fever dream of a movie, but I will at least make a valiant attempt: Sam Neill returns home from business (what type of business is never exactly explained, but it's vaguely espionage-adjacent) to find his wife, Isabelle Adjani, distant, cold, and probably cheating on him. They split, but when he finds that she is neglecting their son, he becomes more obsessed with just what, exactly, is happening with her. We're eventually shown what is happening, but even then, and even after watching this COMPLETELY FUCKING INSANE MOVIE twice, I'm not entirely sure what it is. Most of Polish great Zulawski's films start at about a 9 on an intensity scale of 10, and never let up. Possession, made when he was going through a divorce, starts at a 10, and only escalates from there. It is the most intense, visceral break-up movie I've ever seen, completely earning its place in the horror genre even though it's not REALLY horror (don't let the Carlo Rambaldi credit fool you), by dialing perfectly normal situations and conversations to 11 and letting them play out with two terrific actors told to go for broke. Neill has never been better, and Adjani more than earns every award she received (including the César and Cannes Palme for Best Actress) for her breakdown in the subway alone. Utterly hypnotic even when it frustratingly refuses to make any sense, Possession is completely unlike any other movie you will ever see, and more than worth a watch. Oh, and both Adjani and Neill play their characters' doppelgangers in the movie, although I'm not going to spoil how for either of them.

Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) Sam Neill double feature, y'all!! Look, technically the dinosaurs are clones. Just sayin'.

OKAY FINE. HERE'S MY REAL SECOND PICK.

City of Lost Children (Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, 1995) Krank was created on a massive oil rig by a mad scientist sort, and is now a mad scientist sort himself. Unfortunately, however, he is unable to dream, which is causing him to age prematurely. So he has invented a machine that extracts dreams from children. In order to get children, he has help from some of the original mad scientist's other creations, including a brain named Irvin and six childish clones. Some movies are style over substance, but in Jeunet's films, the style becomes part of the substance, and the dream-like feel of everything here contributes to the "fractured fairytale/bedtime story" vibe of the whole enterprise, creating a totally original, completely new, entirely self-contained cinematic world that I would gladly visit again more times than I would any of our current "Cinematic Universes".

The Island (Michael Bay, 2005) Look, it's not like there's really such a thing as a "good Michael Bay movie", but goddamn did I enjoy this one. It's the story of two beautiful people who look like Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor who live in a dystopian futuristic society that has a lot of arbitrary rules but one saving grace: Every so often, there is a lottery, and the winner gets to go to "The Island", nature's last remaining paradise. Except, SWITCHEROO, it's NOT a dystopian future, but the real world (more or less), and everyone who lived where they lived are actually clones of "real" people who paid insane amounts of money to have a clone for when they need things like a kidney or a heart or anything like that, and this is what actually determines the lottery. It's patently ridiculous, but also fun, with both McGregor and Johansson turning in deliciously calibrated movie star performances.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Queen Margot

Written as part of the series hosted by Nathaniel R. of The Film Experience, a great website where I contribute occasionally, and which should be required reading for all film bloggers.

I don't have enough evidence to prove this, but Patrice Chéreau's La reine Margot is probably the sexiest costume drama ever made. It's certainly the sexiest one I've ever seen. At points it practically drips with eroticism. That the film is also a tremendous tragedy would only be a surprise to anyone who doesn't know French history, but as that probably applies to most Americans, it's worth mentioning, especially since the last act is really, really great at it, and with all the sex and romance on display throughout the rest of the film, it's very easy to envision a version of this story that ends with at least a little happiness.

But, this being a French historical drama about the ruling class, it was never going to have a remotely happy ending.

I found it incredibly difficult to pick a best shot, narrowing it down to four, from which one singular shot simply wouldn't emerge. I would blindly point and pick one, but that would go against the whole concept of this series, so I had to sit here staring at my screen and thinking VERY. HARD. for quite a while in order to complete the task at hand. In the end, it came down to what I think the film is about, and which shot exemplifies that best. But first, the runner-ups.

Honorable Mention

In case you're wondering, that Isabelle Adjani's Margot and her two brothers. It is heavily implied throughout the film that Margot has had relations with her brothers, and certainly in this early shot they sure do seem pretty close. But I like this shot for exemplifying how brazenly open this film is about sex and sexuality - the opening scenes are dripping with homoeroticism, incestual tension, and a decidedly female gaze. I can't think of another historical costume drama that plays that way, and it's refreshing (and somewhat depressing, since this was made way back in 1994).

Bronze Medal

Ladies and gentlemen, the great Virna Lisi. The conniving, scheming mother Catherine de Medici who sets the whole plot into motion and keeps it going right on through its tragic end. Here, as she watches her son the King die of her poison, she looks like a witch - an old crone, or perhaps even a gargoyle, looking down on everyone from the upper regions of the church. But also in the shadows, where she would prefer to stay - out of the limelight, pulling the strings for her sons to rule how she wants them to. They say "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Well, I submit this shot as evidence of its truth.

Silver Medal

The film doesn't take a huge number of stylistic risks, but it does take one pretty big symbolic one that probably shouldn't work but does, quite brilliantly. King Charles, inadvertently poisoned by his own mother's hand, sweats blood as he dies. It's a striking image, watching blood-red sweat drip down his face as he tries to get some last comfort out of Margot, and an appropriate one for the character, who spends most of the film being too nervous and unsure of himself to do what he believes is right. So here, at his most nervous, at death's door, he sweats blood. The blood of the people who died in his name, who died at his (indirect) hand, and will die in the future because of him and his failings.

BEST SHOT

This one is all about the colors and the blocking. It's not just her milky white skin against his tanned, ripped body, but the fact that they mirror the marble pillars behind them almost exactly, and what that means. They're entwined with each other, they lean on each other, but they stand independently, almost in two different worlds. He is a Protestant and she a Catholic - together they could hold up the entire kingdom of France if they wanted, but instead they're wrapped in blood (the red blanket). The blood that came before, which brought them together, and the blood to come after, which will keep them apart. True tragedy is always inevitable, and this is a lovely bit of foreshadowing.