52 Pick-Up # 10 – Z (1969)

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up.

And for anyone who's reading this because they read last week before the edit and are now thinking 'What the Hell? Where's Multiple Maniacs?', I will explain once again – simple human error. I mentally flipped which movie to which point in the schedule. Multiple Maniacs will be coming up next week, but I didn't want to skip this movie, because damn I'm glad I rolled it.

So, once again, as some may have missed it, I will recycle the set-up from before – if I had a nickel for every European movie from 1969 that I've watched this year that aged uncomfortably well, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice.

Without further ado, let's get into Costa-Gavras's political thriller Z.

While I'm falling on my sword this week, I have to take this moment, in discussing what this movie is about, to say it took me way too long to realize this inadvertently dovetails with last week's movie. Like In the Realm of the Senses, Z is its directors stylized take inspired by a true story – in this case, the assassination of Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis and the events that came immediately after.

That origin in reality is a good place to start this review, especially as Gavras begins his movie with the statement 'Any similarity to real people or incidents is not coincidental. It is intentional.' Despite this, unlike Oshima, Gavras doesn't present this as the original Lambrakis story (adding to this, Gavras also took inspiration from other acts of political violence, such as the disappearance of Mehdi Ben Barka) but instead keeps many of the details in his telling ambiguous. We get some generalized names, but a country is not specified, and those characters who are named receive a first name only. It's a move that has helped add to how this movie has aged, as even while it can be compared to a single incident, the open nature of the place and time makes it feel relatable beyond just Greece of the 1960s.

Honestly, I feel like that's the part of this that stuck with me the most – despite the movie being over 50 years old, and the incident that inspired it even further back, Gavras's film still feels relevant nowadays. It's not even a single moment or element. Right from the start, there's a sense of how little has changed, as the movie begins with a scene of a government meeting which starts off talking about combating mildew on vines and then pivots to using the same language for ideologies they disagree with.

A sample of some of the 'mildew' they refer to needing to
eliminate.
Yeah, it's sad we keep letting these guys have power 50+ years on.

Many of these characters don't appear again for much of the rest of the movie, but this scene echoes through much of what follows. From the government offices where higher ups loftily speak of opposing views with the same degree of disdain as molds, we head to the other end of where their ethos takes hold in the form of protests against a government deputy (Yves Montand) who is advocating for nuclear disarmament. Cutting to specific figures among the crowd, it isn't long before Gavras shows us that these are people ready for violence and just waiting for the right opportunity to kick it off – even if they have to do so themselves.

That becomes the parallel that drives the movie – the 'civilized' disdain of the right wing leaders at the top and the antagonistic street violence on the ground, at first presented in contrast, are soon presented to all be part and parcel of the same larger political undertaking. The leaders can happily talk of their opponents as simply dirt or mold because their own rank and file people are the ones who will dirty their hands to deal with them (and, if necessary, take the fall for the cause.)

I'm trying not to get too into the details on this, because, despite the age of this movie, I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it. Especially because I would argue it is incredibly worth seeing. Not just for the relevance (though that is a big part of it), but also as this is in general a well made thriller in its own right. Besides the very palpable sense of anger Gavras imbues this movie with for the abuses those in power inflict with little to no meaningful consequence, it is also a genuinely tense, well made movie that keeps you engaged with seeing how far it will all go and to what end.

As an additional general note goes – the title of this movie comes from an actual political sentiment from Greece at the time, a shorthand referral to Lambrakis said to mean 'He lives.' It feels both encouraging and sadly appropriate as a title nowadays. Encouraging for the feeling that, even in death, the ideals of people like Lambrakis (or his fictional on-screen counterpart) continue on after their death. Sad as it also applies to the above mentioned feeling of anger Gavras works into this movie. Even over half a century later, the maneuvers in this movie feel sadly familiar, even as the technology changes, the plays remain the same. Even more familiar than the strategies, however, are the consequences – those in power see their opponents discredited, cast aside, or flat out killed, and suffer no real meaningful losses, save for the occasional resignation or a foot soldier who has to be sent to prison. They repeatedly get caught in abuses of their authority and are then left free to keep right on abusing them.

Tale as old as time, as it were.

Okay, that was a bit more of a downer note than I intended to go out on, but it's hard not to feel a bit gloomy with this movie (he said after endorsing people watch it. Hey, not every moviegoing experience needs to be about comfort.)

In all seriousness, this is a very worthwhile movie. Just, maybe have something light for a chaser afterward.

Speaking of which, next week, as promised it's back to Uncharted Waters with the movie that arguably ushered in the rise of Divine as a force in Dreamland lore – it's Multiple Maniacs.

Till then.

Blue Velvet (1986)

 Hello and welcome back for another round of the Criterion Challenge to close out July.

First, my apologies again for the shorter entry last time. Been working with some tech difficulties (non-film related piece of advice - Dell laptops are not your friend!) Also, the more I looked at the film through this particular lens, the more I realized my takeaway was 'This movie is great, but damn if time hasn't left it a grim aftertaste.'

I would still recommend giving it a watch, just - bear in mind, with the angle I was trying to write that from, it got kind of darker than I intended. It's still a great time in its own right.

In hindsight, this is probably NOT the best way to set up an entry on Blue Velvet, but we're rolling, so too bad!

 

 
Like last time, I knew this movie was a definite pick for this theme. Which, given it's David Lynch, is amusing to me - for as much as his work has been studied, scrutinized, debated, and picked apart in film circles - Blue Velvet is arguably one of his most straightforward feature. So much so that, in discussing it with a friend recently for this, she put it best saying it's a movie that lets you know what it's about within the first few minutes.

Granted, it doesn't just say it, but the visual language is clear enough: opening with a scene of sunny, everytown Lumberton, USA, subsequently disrupted as a man has a stroke, collapsing in his yard. From his fall, Lynch keeps cutting closer, moving past him to the insects scrabbling in the dirt under the pristine green grass.

That single beat encapsulates the journey protagonist Jeffrey Beaumont (Lynch alum Kyle MacLachlan) will find himself on. Digging past the charming hometown he grew up in and remembered to discover the dark, rotting underbelly hiding under the smalltown charm, best embodied in the psychopathic Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper in one of the definitive roles of his career.)

It's certainly not a particularly new idea to fiction - Stephen King alone could put together a mini-library about the number of works he's done that dissect the assumed morality of small town America - but it's clearly an idea that resonated for Lynch. So much so that it became one of the major threads he dug into with the series Twin Peaks years later.

All the same, there's something striking about how it's addressed in Blue Velvet - particularly because it feels almost uncharacteristically straightforward for Lynch. The movie has several of his stylistic tells to it, and some of the direction and editing gives certain scenes a dreamlike feel even if the story itself is meant to be seen as more 'real' than the subsequent TV series that shares its themes and some cast members.

That 'real' aspect is, I think, part of what I've found myself dwelling on the most this time around. Particular with regards to the dynamic between Jeffrey and Frank.

One of the things that really strikes me about Frank as a villain in this is that, thematically, he's not presented as an outsider. He's not some 'other' who's come in to corrupt the pure people of Lumberton. The implication is that Frank, and just about everyone around him could easily be just that person down the street. In fact, the one figure in the movie that could almost be seen as an 'other', Isabella Rosselini's Dorothy Vallens, is herself a victim of Frank and his group.

It's honestly the scariest part about Frank - he's not framed as some strange outside monster. Just based on what we see, he could be a home-grown, all-American maniac that Jeffrey simply never noticed growing up. In fact, there's a scene between Jeffrey and Dorothy that even seems to suggest that there is the potential for someone like Jeffrey to become like Frank if he lets himself.

Which is where I come to the weirdest realization I took away from this rewatch - despite this being easily the darker the two movies watched, thematically, I came away from this with a slightly more optimistic sense than I did with watching Lost in America through this lens.

A big part of this is due to the fact that, ultimately, though this movie is about that darker heart under 'wholesome' America, it's also a movie that advocates the idea of not ignoring it, trying to confront it for what it is. The movie makes it clear that Jeffrey's own attempts to investigate it nearly get him killed at multiple points, but it also puts him in a position where he can't simply ignore everything he has seen and learned over the course of the film.

Yeah, in the end, it almost feels a bit too clean (as partly shown by the discourse over the fake robin in the final scene - a prop that Lynch has admitted was born of function rather than theme) but there is still something oddly encouraging about that stance in this day and age. Framing it not as an act of machismo or anything like that, but simply recognizing it's the right thing to do.

No. Really.
For all the discourse over whether the clearly
fake robin symbolized a false happiness,
Lynch admitted they just weren't able to get a
live robin the day of the shoot. This was the solution
from props.

And again, coming into this after reflecting on Lost in America and realizing "Wow, we learned nothing from this," there is a certain strange sense of therapy that comes with a movie that flat-out says 'It's out there, and pretending it isn't won't make it go away.'

Okay, so that brings an end to a thematically darker month than I intended.

Tell you what? Pack your bags everyone. We're going on a vacation next month.

Better yet, we're going on a couple of vacations!

So see you guys again in August, where we're taking some trips.

Till then!