Has anyone here seen any Jancso?

[Spaceman Spiff]

The local cinematheque is having a retrospective of his work, and as a fellow Magyar I feel obliged to go. Has anyone seen his stuff? Here's what movies will be showing:

Silence and Cry
The Round-Up
Red Psalm
The Red and the White

[baby doll]

I've seen The Red and the White and Red Psalm which are absolutely mind-blowing. I can't wait to see the rest.

[Qrazy]

I've seen and would order them somewhat like:

1. The Red and the White
2. The Round-Up
3. Cantata
4. Red Psalm

Silence and Cry looks interesting. The first three are very good, Red Psalm becomes a bit too rhetorical for my taste but it's still compelling.

[balmakboor]

I've seen The Red and the White and Red Psalm which are absolutely mind-blowing. I can't wait to see the rest.

How did you see the films of Martin Arnold? They sound like my thing.

[baby doll]

How did you see the films of Martin Arnold? They sound like my thing.I torrented them.

Link. (http://www.mininova.org/tor/2283900)

[Izzy Black]

I torrented them.

Link. (http://www.mininova.org/tor/2283900)

Nice link.

On a side note, not sure how you got through a Zabriskie Point review without saying anything about its politics. That it's narratively inept is not really shedding much light on the film.

[Izzy Black]

As for Jancso, seen most of his stuff. The best of which are Red Palm and The Round Up. Both of which are considerably more important than The Red and White in my view.

[Qrazy]

As for Jancso, seen most of his stuff. The best of which are Red Palm and The Round Up. Both of which are considerably more important than The Red and White in my view.

The Round Up is perhaps more important politically and historically but The Red and the White is more effective in my eyes. I've already mentioned my problems with Red Psalm. Out of the few Jancso I've seen that one seems his most Godardian. You're fairly big on Godard though aren't you?

You've seen the better half of his roughly 19 films? Which have you seen? Also just out of curiousity how old are you?

[Spaceman Spiff]

Red Psalm becomes a bit too rhetorical for my taste but it's still compelling.

Could you elaborate on this? I think I know what you mean (does it get a little... hand-wavy [so to speak])?

I only have enough dosh for maybe 2 of these films. I think I'll check out the Red and the White and maybe a flip a coin for one of the others.

[Spaceman Spiff]

I've already mentioned my problems with Red Psalm. Out of the few Jancso I've seen that one seems his most Godardian. You're fairly big on Godard though aren't you?

Oof. You've really scared me away from this one now. I cannot stand Godard.

[Qrazy]

Could you elaborate on this? I think I know what you mean (does it get a little... hand-wavy [so to speak])?


It's a very overtly political and historical film, much more so than The Round-Up or The Red and the White. The latter two have political subtext of course but it doesn't appear as blatantly as it does in Red Psalm. If I were you and you're only seeing two I'd see The Red and the White and The Round-up.

[B-side]

Not yet, but this is as good a time as any. Neflix has The Red and the White, Electra, My Love and Private Vices Public Virtues. I bumped The Red and the White to the top.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

Yes. Red Psalm. It was a fucking bore.

[baby doll]

On a side note, not sure how you got through a Zabriskie Point review without saying anything about its politics. That it's narratively inept is not really shedding much light on the film.I must not have been clear at all. Antonioni's strategies for de-dramatizing the narrative are the same as in his European films. But as for its politics, the film's radicalism struck me as an empty pose since the movie doesn't engage with any issues (when the hero and his friends occupy a building on campus, they make no demands and have nothing they want to protest).

[baby doll]

Yes. Red Psalm. It was a fucking bore.So all those intricate camera movements and the dense soundtrack did nothing for you?

[Boner M]

The Red and the White was very good. Would like to see more, especially My Way Home.

[Derek]

The Red and the White and The Round-Up are both great. I imagine both would benefit from a theatrical viewing.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

So all those intricate camera movements and the dense soundtrack did nothing for you?

Nope. Even the communist boobies failed to arouse me.

[Izzy Black]

The Round Up is perhaps more important politically and historically but The Red and the White is more effective in my eyes. I've already mentioned my problems with Red Psalm. Out of the few Jancso I've seen that one seems his most Godardian. You're fairly big on Godard though aren't you?

I really like Godard. Not sure how Godardian I read Red Psalm, though.


You've seen the better half of his roughly 19 films? Which have you seen? Also just out of curiousity how old are you?

Ah, the inquisition! I have seen The Pacifist, The Cantata, Message of Stone, The Presence, Silence and Cry, God Walks Backwards, The Bells Have Gone to Rome, Electra My Love, and few others I can't think of right now. Some more of his documentary work included. I like him quite a bit.

Age is in the mid 20s and depressingly climbing.

[Qrazy]

I really like Godard. Not sure how Godardian I read Red Psalm, though.

Well it's certainly it's own creation, I only mean Godardian in the sense that it seems to me to be much more of a cinematic political/historical essay than the other three films of his I've seen.


Ah, the inquisition! I have seen The Pacifist, The Cantata, Message of Stone, The Presence, Silence and Cry, God Walks Backwards, The Bells Have Gone to Rome, Electra My Love, and few others I can't think of right now. Some more of his documentary work included. I like him quite a bit.

Age is in the mid 20s and depressingly climbing.

Could you please rank those for me so I have a sense of what to prioritize? I hear that about age, we're not getting any younger. Anyway the only reason I asked is because a handful of times now you've mentioned seeing most of a couple of arthouse directors filmographies (sometimes where the films are harder to come by) and it just made me wonder if having more time to look for the films had anything to do with it (you probably use Karagarga?).

[Izzy Black]

I must not have been clear at all. Antonioni's strategies for de-dramatizing the narrative are the same as in his European films. But as for its politics, the film's radicalism struck me as an empty pose since the movie doesn't engage with any issues (when the hero and his friends occupy a building on campus, they make no demands and have nothing they want to protest).

What you said was that the narrative was pretty inept. Cosigning Pauline Kael by referring to how the de-dramatization works against itself because the acting was either bland or the characterization was so weak that it renders it narratively ineffective. Then you restricted its politics to plot and character only, grossly undermining Antonioni's stance. In effect, adding very little understanding to the 40 year old film. Which is fine, I suppose, except there has been somewhat of a resurgence of interest in this film in recent years, and while it may be his film maudit to greater or lesser extent, it has built a following over the years both in the academic and local sphere. Which is to say, there has been some worthwhile criticism on the film since decades old Kael.

As for the film, Antonioni does not adopt the radicalism of his characters, nor does he outright condemn it. He does comment, however, rather just coolly observe. Antonioni is many things, but apolitical is not one of them. He is sympathetic to their disaffection. He does not explore their psyche in the literal sense, because Antonioni is not a Bergman or a Dostoevsky. Psychological realism is not his shtick. He's a formalist. Instead, we get strange off-kilter music as Mark traverses uncomfortable streets distilled by consumerist advertisement. Daria, on the other end, is wrapped up in trying to escape the ills of corporatism. Typical to Antonioni's subjectivist style, as Monica Vitti's character visualizes a red-tinted modernist wasteland in Ill Deserto rosso, or seeing through Thomas' eyes in Blowup the unreliable perspectives and disappearing tennis players, we also see anti-consumerist rage in the form of over-the-top, romanticized explosions at the end of Zabriskie Point and unreliable pictures of reality. His characters, in other words, are lost in a fantasy world. Just as Mark seems oblivious to the direness of his situation, or imagines erotic escapism in the form of a Utopian orgy of promiscuity, we have conceptions of a moral compass and romantic love that is considerably marginalized, and perhaps, destabilized or deteriorated. This does not necessarily condescend to the veracity of their disaffection, but acknowledges it all the same. Antonioni is less interested, for example, in the racial politics of the documentary-esque introduction to the film than he is in the notion of reactionary individuals making sense of their identity in the face of status conflict. This is what Antonioni is about. That is, not necessarily the topically political, but about the ontological effects of social institutions.

Zabriskie Point is by no means his best film. It is quite hokey and silly in places and not very interesting dramatically, or theoretically compelling in its straw man picture of capitalism, but it is not a vapid hole of disinterested style, either.

[Qrazy]

The explosions segment at the end of the film deserves to be in his oeuvre, sometimes I rewatch it on youtube. I particularly enjoy the shot of the books.

[Izzy Black]

Well it's certainly it's own creation, I only mean Godardian in the sense that it seems to me to be much more of a cinematic political/historical essay than the other three films of his I've seen.

Perhaps.


Could you please rank those for me so I have a sense of what to prioritize? I hear that about age, we're not getting any younger. Anyway the only reason I asked is because a handful of times now you've mentioned seeing most of a couple of arthouse directors filmographies (sometimes where the films are harder to come by) and it just made me wonder if having more time to look for the films had anything to do with it (you probably use Karagarga?).

Pacifist is a favorite because I am a big Vitti fan, but Cantata is probably the best of these. Then maybe My Way Home and The Presence. The others are good too, but perhaps bear less mark of his artistic style. I do use KG, but I honestly do not have that much time. I have just seen a lot of films over the years. I usually go on binges on a particular era/director too. So it might seem like I have seen more than I have when I have seen a lot of one director. I am pretty locked down with school though. I spend too much time on forums and such as it is.

[Amnesiac]

...

[Derek]

Speaking of Karagarga, does anyone have an invite they could send me?

Yup, PM me your e-mail address.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Speaking of Karagarga, does anyone have an invite they could send me?

Um, me too (if possible).

I will get you a pint if you drop by my city.

[Amnesiac]

Yup, PM me your e-mail address.

Much thanks.

I can return the favor with a Demonoid invite, if you're looking for one.

[soitgoes...]

I also have a few invites to KG as well as Secret-Cinema if anyone else is in need.

As for Jancso, I have seen The Round-up which I enjoyed quite a bit. I was actually on the verge of watching Red Psalm in the next few days, and then I read this thread. Not that it'll deter me from seeing it, but I'm a little more wary than I was before.

[Spaceman Spiff]

I also have a few invites to KG as well as Secret-Cinema if anyone else is in need.

!!! Please, please, please...

It's official. I'm going to see The Red and the White + The Round-Up.

[baby doll]

What you said was that the narrative was pretty inept. Cosigning Pauline Kael by referring to how the de-dramatization works against itself because the acting was either bland or the characterization was so weak that it renders it narratively ineffective. Then you restricted its politics to plot and character only, grossly undermining Antonioni's stance. In effect, adding very little understanding to the 40 year old film. Which is fine, I suppose, except there has been somewhat of a resurgence of interest in this film in recent years, and while it may be his film maudit to greater or lesser extent, it has built a following over the years both in the academic and local sphere. Which is to say, there has been some worthwhile criticism on the film since decades old Kael.I didn't say the narrative was inept. I said Antonioni de-dramatized the narrative, much as he had in his films throughout the sixties. I like the acting in his 60s films and The Passenger, but here, the characters are too thinly conceived to be convincing.

The Pauline Kael quote, and the short review it's taken from, say nothing about Antonioni's tendency to de-dramatize the narrative or the film's acting.

How else are we to know what Antonioni's stance is except through his content? There are some sly satiric digs at consumerism (particularly, the TV ad for a land development that the Rod Taylor character shows to some investors), but I don't think the hero and his friends occupied the building to protest there being too many billboards in Los Angeles. And while blowing up houses and other consumer products (in Jonathan Rosenbaum's words, an inventory of the modern world) is all well and good, what alternative utopia do the filmmakers foresee emerging from the ashes?

As for your own interpretation, it seems valid enough, but there are some sentences you might want to consider re-wording.


Instead, we get strange off-kilter music as Mark traverses uncomfortable streets distilled by consumerist advertisement.How can a street be distilled (to have its essence extracted) by advertising? Is there a form of advertising that isn't consumerist?


Daria, on the other end, is wrapped up in trying to escape the ills of corporatism.Is Daria wrapped up in the ills of corporatism or wrapped up in escaping them? If you meant the former (and I assume you did), you might have said, "Daria is wrapped up in the ills of corporatism and is trying to escape them." However, we're still left with the question of what, exactly, are the ills of corporatism? Daria does secretarial work to pay the bills, but there's nothing in the film to suggest that she feels trapped, or even that she wants to quit.


Typical to Antonioni's subjectivist style,Replace "to" with "of."


as Monica Vitti's character visualizes a red-tinted modernist wasteland in Ill Deserto rosso, or seeing through Thomas' eyes in Blowup the unreliable perspectives and disappearing tennis players,If this were a longer essay, you could make this a footnote (although you'd have to revise the wording, which is atrocious), but here I'd eliminate it entirely. If you did decide to keep it, I'd say, "as in Il Deserto rosso, where Monica Vitti's character visualizes a red-tinted modern [not "modernist"] wasteland," and scrap the bit about Blowup because I really don't have a clue what you're on about when you say "unreliable perspectives." By the way, wasn't the wasteland in Red Desert real and the tropical island story a fantasy?


we also see anti-consumerist rage in the form of over-the-top, romanticized explosions at the end of Zabriskie Point and unreliable pictures of reality. His characters, in other words, are lost in a fantasy world. Just as Mark seems oblivious to the direness of his situation,You need to elaborate when you talk about the direness of Mark's situation, which I presume to mean his being so stupid as to try to return the plane he's stolen and getting shot by a cop.


or imagines erotic escapism in the form of a Utopian orgy of promiscuity,How do you know it's Mark who imagines the orgy and not Daria? It seems to me that you're taking a very self conscious stylistic choice and attempting to normalize it by assigning it (somewhat arbitrarily) to one character's point of view.


we have conceptions of a moral compass and romantic love that is considerably marginalized, and perhaps, destabilized or deteriorated.Replace "is" with "are." How have these concepts been marginalized, destabilized and/or deteriorated? And what does this have to do with the film? You say that, just as Mark is out of touch with reality, "we" have these ideas that are outdated. How is this connection made in the film?


This does not necessarily condescend to the veracity of their disaffection, but acknowledges it all the same.This sentence doesn't make any sense. How can the film(?) lower itself to the truthfulness of the characters' disaffection?


Antonioni is less interested, for example, in the racial politics of the documentary-esque introduction to the film than he is in the notion of reactionary individuals making sense of their identity in the face of status conflict. This is what Antonioni is about.Take out "the notion of." I've seen all of Antonioni's films from L'avventura (1960) to The Passenger (1975), with the sole exception of Chung Kuo (1972), and can't recall a single reactionary character, or are rich people automatically fascists? And doesn't status conflict clarify who you are more than it obscures it? I think we can safely say that Rod Taylor isn't a revolutionary and Mark isn't a haute bourgeoisie land developer. Or maybe it is really just a notion.


That is, not necessarily the topically political, but about the ontological effects of social institutions.According to Wikipedia (I know, not the most reliable source), Ontology is a branch of philosophy concerned with what things can be said to exist and how to group them. Now, what an "ontological effect" might be remains a mystery to me.

[soitgoes...]

!!! Please, please, please...

It's official. I'm going to see The Red and the White + The Round-Up.
You need to PM me your email.

[Izzy Black]

I didn't say the narrative was inept. I said Antonioni de-dramatized the narrative, much as he had in his films throughout the sixties. I like the acting in his 60s films and The Passenger, but here, the characters are too thinly conceived to be convincing.

You said this:



Zabriskie Point was made at a time when Hollywood studios were desperately trying to tap into the counterculture, both as a subject and an audience, and many reviewers in 1970 saw the film as a particularly inept attempt to do just that. (In her review of the film, Pauline Kael wrote, "If it weren't for [...] the embarrassment you feel for Antonioni, this would just be one more 'irreverent' pandering-to-youth movie, and (except visually) worse than most.")

Essentially, you say, as I said, in solidarity with Kael, that Antonioni's attempt to tap into the counterculture as a subject - which is developed with respect to storytelling, theme, and characterization - was inept. Clearly, Kael is talking about narrative here. She is saying that the film was an embarrassing attempt at this kind of movie, and worst than most, aside from its visual merits. What else could she be talking about other than narrative? Theme, story, and development, or the representation of such, are the fundamental faculties of narrative. You said it was inept, citing Kael as your authority, and I can't say I disagree with either of you, but yet you sure seem to think there's a disagreement somewhere here.


The Pauline Kael quote, and the short review it's taken from, say nothing about Antonioni's tendency to de-dramatize the narrative or the film's acting.

Kael says nothing about de-dramatization as a particular technique of Antonioni, but her conclusion is just the same. As you say, Kael and other critics of the film at the time were right on the money. You mention elements of Antonioni's de-dramatization, but all this amounts to is that this technique works against itself, and we are left with a pandering to youth counterculture movie with nothing really to say. Kael explained what the movie failed to do, and you explained why it failed to do so; that its characters were poorly conceived (how do you conceive good characters if not narratively?); that Antonioni's digressions did not lead anywhere; that the chronology of the film's sequence casually lacked in coherence. In other words, you are principally in agreement with Kael that these things leave us with a fairly inept movie with nothing pointed to say (i.e. the de-dramatization did not work in this case). Which is to say, in effect, that we are quibbling, but not really disagreeing. I am sorry if I ruffled your feathers, but my concern is with the claim that Antonioni has nothing to say politically. It's a mess narratively, but such a claim does not really shed much light on the film. On we go...


How else are we to know what Antonioni's stance is except through his content? There are some sly satiric digs at consumerism (particularly, the TV ad for a land development that the Rod Taylor character shows to some investors), but I don't think the hero and his friends occupied the building to protest there being too many billboards in Los Angeles. And while blowing up houses and other consumer products (in Jonathan Rosenbaum's words, an inventory of the modern world) is all well and good, what alternative utopia do the filmmakers foresee emerging from the ashes?

I am curious as to how well you know Antonioni. He is famous precisely for his subversion of typical benchmarks of storytelling. Yes, we understand his themes through his content, but what makes him great is not merely the content of the shot, but how he shoots it. His technique evokes the theme as much as, if not more than, characterization and story. The story for Antonioni merely provides a framework by which he can experiment with his technique. For example, the framing of individuals in L'Eclisse as tiny beings through a wide-angle lens against strange massive architecture says more about Antonioni's stance than the building or characters themselves. What is significant here, then, about the de-dramatization, is how this aimless, disconnected narrative and his fantastical digressions relate to the psychology and inner life of his characters.


As for your own interpretation, it seems valid enough, but there are some sentences you might want to consider re-wording.

Possibly. I was not hoping to get published with this extemporaneous post, but we'll see what we got.


How can a street be distilled (to have its essence extracted) by advertising? Is there a form of advertising that isn't consumerist?

Well, no. The advertising itself is consumerist, but that does not mean the street or the environment which one inhabits is ipso facto consumerist; that is, not unless it is awash with advertisement and teleological collapse (the city becomes industrially functionless and manifests only as a signifier for materialism).


Is Daria wrapped up in the ills of corporatism or wrapped up in escaping them? If you meant the former (and I assume you did),

I mean the latter. She's wrapped up in escaping them. Like I wrote. Right? I do not find my original sentence particularly ambiguous, but I will grant you your concern and try to better clarify myself.


you might have said, "Daria is wrapped up in the ills of corporatism and is trying to escape them."

But I am not sure how this means anything different than what I wrote?


However, we're still left with the question of what, exactly, are the ills of corporatism? Daria does secretarial work to pay the bills, but there's nothing in the film to suggest that she feels trapped, or even that she wants to quit.

Really? This is essentially what the ending is about. Antonioni shows us in haphazard fashion the greedy planning of the corporate types in private, their ostensible sexism, and as such, her waif-life detachment. A better question - is Mark trapped? Is he trying to quit? Is he trying to escape? Their entire withdrawal and counterculture, rebellious escapism is our evidence of these things, and of course, also her sadness and eventual culminating rage in the conclusion. Antonioni is not an internal realist, as I wrote. Much like his other films, characters drift about and often engage in seemingly mundane, irrelevant behavior, but their entrapment is pervasive. For example, Vitti talks about in interviews how in Antonioni's films her characters appear as though they are wealthy and of an economic status that affords them the freedom to do as they like, wander into stores, attend parties, and worry about very little, but the void and emptiness of their lifestyles is the cage that they cannot escape. His characters are often in a search, investigators seeking truth, meaning, or some ineffable answer - or as Deleuze says of Antonioni, he impersonally follows a "becoming" in his characters; they are retreating (and ascending?) from the illusion of their freedom. But to where? Is Thomas not trapped in Blow Up just as Mark and Daria, or Vittoria and Sandro? I believe these are the questions Antonioni is asking us. To look beneath the surface and explore the inner life of these characters as it is given rise by his fascinating technique.


Replace "to" with "of."

Oh, dear. Do forgive my fallibility.


If this were a longer essay, you could make this a footnote (although you'd have to revise the wording, which is atrocious),

I offer my sincere condolences to the suffering your eyes must have endured from bearing witness to such atrocity - although, I can assure you, it was not quite my intention to prepare an essay of any sorts. I considered these to be rather casual reflections that hopefully might have provided you something to work with in terms of what I felt to be important in the film. I could have left it at calling the narrative inept does not say much, but I figured I would do you the courtesy of adding on to what I might mean by that.


but here I'd eliminate it entirely. If you did decide to keep it, I'd say, "as in Il Deserto rosso, where Monica Vitti's character visualizes a red-tinted modern [not "modernist"] wasteland,"

I can't say I agree. The "modernist" distinction here is significant. I am not merely referring to a modern wasteland, because I am referring to a technique and point-of-view, not necessarily reality. I am speaking of Antonioni's visual conception of the world. His approach is quintessentially modernist. (Hence why I emphasized the point about Antonioni's subjectivist style). The idea of a post-industrial wasteland on the fringes of societal collapse comes from the likes T.S. Elliot and Samuel Beckett. Yes, Elliot's Waste Land is a modernist wasteland; so to is Beckett's post-nuclear, gray-days wasteland in Endgame. Modernist insofar as it is the worldview of artists that used these hyper-real settings to set the stage for their experimental narrative break down and philosophical ruminations. This technique in tandem with Monica Vitti's neurosis in the film complicates an easy picture of "reality."


and scrap the bit about Blowup because I really don't have a clue what you're on about when you say "unreliable perspectives." By the way, wasn't the wasteland in Red Desert real and the tropical island story a fantasy?

Do you consider Thomas a reliable narrator? It is a very basic concern of the film. Whose perspective are we seeing - the director's or Thomas'? Are the mime tennis players even there, and why do we hear a ball that is imaginary? Did he capture a murder? Why does it matter to him? Is the real question less an epistemological one, and more a spiritual one? That his search for truth guises his disillusionment and his search for meaning beyond his materialist lifestyle? These are legitimate questions, I think.


You need to elaborate when you talk about the direness of Mark's situation, which I presume to mean his being so stupid as to try to return the plane he's stolen and getting shot by a cop.

Is it really so vague? What else would I mean? I was actually even feeding off a point in your review. As you said:


In a conventional film, the rest of the plot would be about Mark's flight from the law, but here the movie almost seems to forget it happened.

The film is essentially about a cop-killing fugitive, but he hardly appears to display the anxieties of a fugitive. Is it, that, "dire" is too strong of a word that it lends itself for needing elaboration? I suppose I do find it to be rather self-evident that his situation is quite dire.


How do you know it's Mark who imagines the orgy and not Daria? It seems to me that you're taking a very self conscious stylistic choice and attempting to normalize it by assigning it (somewhat arbitrarily) to one character's point of view.

Not at all! It could be Daria's perspective, indeed. More importantly, however, is that it could be Antonioni's own stylization that possibly says more about the director than it does the characters, but this in no way diminishes the subtext. Whether we are speaking of Antonioni, Daria, or Mark, the escapist fantasy is reflective of this disillusionment all the same.


Replace "is" with "are."

Yes, yes. Thank you. To think I just submitted this rigorous article in for peer-review too! Whew. What a lifesaver you have been for me!


How have these concepts been marginalized, destabilized and/or deteriorated? And what does this have to do with the film?

It has everything to do with it! Like Antonioni famously said at the controversial L'Avventura Cannes premiere, "Eros is sick" for the modern world. These acts of escapist sensualism are not necessarily ideal notions of romantic love for Antonioni. Sex in his films is not captured as something intimate, romantic, or meaningful, but in most cases, quite the opposite. Modernity and its trappings are what has divested love and romantic encounters of its meaning. There is a sense in which everything is out of balance or has been degraded.


You say that, just as Mark is out of touch with reality, "we" have these ideas that are outdated. How is this connection made in the film?

I am not sure what you mean here. Help me out - as you have been so kind to do so thus far.


This sentence doesn't make any sense. How can the film(?) lower itself to the truthfulness of the characters' disaffection?

I do not think you gathered the connotation of my word use here. I am using condescension in the sense of one who patronizes another. (Not so sure the alternative use is very common in such contexts to be honest). My argument here is that Antonioni does not patronize his characters for their disaffection and rebellion; that is, he is not merely mocking or scorning counterculture youth.


Take out "the notion of."

Hey, hey. You're the boss!


I've seen all of Antonioni's films from L'avventura (1960) to The Passenger (1975), with the sole exception of Chung Kuo (1972), and can't recall a single reactionary character

Thomas in Blowup is quite reactionary. He attempts to place himself above his culture and is something of an outcast. He thinks himself an outsider, but Antonioni suggests that really he is quite the same. Claudia in L'Avventura is disillusioned with her peers and modernity. She begins to have trouble understanding people's behaviors, and she seems to be trying to escape - something. Anna, just as Claudia, perhaps arrived at this sentiment much sooner, and successfully escaped modernity altogether, entirely vanishing from the screen. In this sense, the modern world has decayed from its values and these characters are searching for a return, a becoming, or a reclamation of now dead values, or maybe a discovery of new ones.


or are rich people automatically fascists?

Huh?

[Izzy Black]

And doesn't status conflict clarify who you are more than it obscures it? I think we can safely say that Rod Taylor isn't a revolutionary and Mark isn't a haute bourgeoisie land developer. Or maybe it is really just a notion.

What I mean is that status conflict suggests there is a kind of personal conflict and uncertainty as to one's status in the world via economic, social, racial, or cultural standing. This conflict itself does not bespeak identity; but rather, it is the individual who is searching for meaning and identity amidst this conflict. You could say there is a conflict between two classes, and that this demarcates the identity of the two classes, but it does not explain how individuals identify with such class or statuses, however defined by the conflict. In other words, I am discussing internal states and not external labels.


According to Wikipedia (I know, not the most reliable source), Ontology is a branch of philosophy concerned with what things can be said to exist and how to group them. Now, what an "ontological effect" might be remains a mystery to me.

I am not just casually throwing out some cursory word in an arcane attempt at abstraction here. My major is philosophy so I sometimes tend to use jargon of my field, but ontology is concerned with the nature of being. Heidegger's Being And Time and other classic works of existentialism are premiere examples of works in ontology. What constitutes the identity and fundamental self? What does it mean to be? Guiliana in Il deserto rosso, for example, suffers from an ontological crises. The inner life and one's individual self and psychological states are the elements of being that can be tempered, affected, and influenced by one's place in the world. A great line in Beyond the Clouds is when Malkovich's character (as a director, ostensibly mirroring Antonioni himself) explains in monologue his belief that individuals are personally shaped and defined by their society. Antonioni is concerned with this relationship between the external world and the internal experience; the self and the world.

[baby doll]

You said this:



Zabriskie Point was made at a time when Hollywood studios were desperately trying to tap into the counterculture, both as a subject and an audience, and many reviewers in 1970 saw the film as a particularly inept attempt to do just that. (In her review of the film, Pauline Kael wrote, "If it weren't for [...] the embarrassment you feel for Antonioni, this would just be one more 'irreverent' pandering-to-youth movie, and (except visually) worse than most.")

Essentially, you say, as I said, in solidarity with Kael, that Antonioni's attempt to tap into the counterculture as a subject - which is developed with respect to storytelling, theme, and characterization - was inept. Clearly, Kael is talking about narrative here. She is saying that the film was an embarrassing attempt at this kind of movie, and worst than most, aside from its visual merits. What else could she be talking about other than narrative? Theme, story, and development, or the representation of such, are the fundamental faculties of narrative. You said it was inept, citing Kael as your authority, and I can't say I disagree with either of you, but yet you sure seem to think there's a disagreement somewhere here.

Kael says nothing about de-dramatization as a particular technique of Antonioni, but her conclusion is just the same. As you say, Kael and other critics of the film at the time were right on the money. You mention elements of Antonioni's de-dramatization, but all this amounts to is that this technique works against itself, and we are left with a pandering to youth counterculture movie with nothing really to say. Kael explained what the movie failed to do, and you explained why it failed to do so; that its characters were poorly conceived (how do you conceive good characters if not narratively?); that Antonioni's digressions did not lead anywhere; that the chronology of the film's sequence casually lacked in coherence. In other words, you are principally in agreement with Kael that these things leave us with a fairly inept movie with nothing pointed to say (i.e. the de-dramatization did not work in this case). Which is to say, in effect, that we are quibbling, but not really disagreeing. I am sorry if I ruffled your feathers, but my concern is with the claim that Antonioni has nothing to say politically. It's a mess narratively, but such a claim does not really shed much light on the film. On we go...Part of this is a misunderstanding on my part of what you meant when you said that I said the narrative was inept, which I took to be casting aspersions on Antonioni's de-dramatization strategies, which is what I was primarily interested in when I wrote my blog entry: How does Antonioni, here and in his other films, violate classical norms. If the film doesn't have a strong message, I don't think it's because Antonioni's de-dramatization of the narrative undercuts whatever point he's trying to make (his other films that I've seen have clear messages), but because of the film's failure to really deal in depth with the counterculture.


I am curious as to how well you know Antonioni. He is famous precisely for his subversion of typical benchmarks of storytelling. Yes, we understand his themes through his content, but what makes him great is not merely the content of the shot, but how he shoots it. His technique evokes the theme as much as, if not more than, characterization and story. The story for Antonioni merely provides a framework by which he can experiment with his technique. For example, the framing of individuals in L'Eclisse as tiny beings through a wide-angle lens against strange massive architecture says more about Antonioni's stance than the building or characters themselves. What is significant here, then, about the de-dramatization, is how this aimless, disconnected narrative and his fantastical digressions relate to the psychology and inner life of his characters.But in L'eclisse, those points are made through other channels as well (like the narrative) that compliment their formal articulation.


Well, no. The advertising itself is consumerist, but that does not mean the street or the environment which one inhabits is ipso facto consumerist; that is, not unless it is awash with advertisement and teleological collapse (the city becomes industrially functionless and manifests only as a signifier for materialism).I understand that jargon can't be avoided in discussing film any more than science or any other topic, but keep in mind that my formal training is in production rather theory, and given the East Is East mentality in both camps, I'm practically a layman. Still, I'll do my best. Thanks for clarifying teleological collapse, although I'm still not sure I understand. Mark, so far as I can recall, doesn't visit any industrial sites. As I recall, he walks to a diner, which still serves food even if he doesn't have any money to buy some. The advertisements serve a function in that they create desire for consumer products. Do you mean to say then that the products advertised serve no function?


But I am not sure how this means anything different than what I wrote?It means she's wrapped up in the ills rather than the escaping.


Is it really so vague? What else would I mean? I was actually even feeding off a point in your review. As you said:


In a conventional film, the rest of the plot would be about Mark's flight from the law, but here the movie almost seems to forget it happened.

The film is essentially about a cop-killing fugitive, but he hardly appears to display the anxieties of a fugitive. Is it, that, "dire" is too strong of a word that it lends itself for needing elaboration? I suppose I do find it to be rather self-evident that his situation is quite dire.But he's not killed for shooting the cop but stealing the plane (or rather, trying to return it). In the film, to be a cop-killing fugitive isn't a dire situation because he's never brought to justice for it (unless you take his death as a kind of cosmic justice that upholds the status quo).


It has everything to do with it! Like Antonioni famously said at the controversial L'Avventura Cannes premiere, "Eros is sick" for the modern world. These acts of escapist sensualism are not necessarily ideal notions of romantic love for Antonioni. Sex in his films is not captured as something intimate, romantic, or meaningful, but in most cases, quite the opposite. Modernity and its trappings are what has divested love and romantic encounters of its meaning. There is a sense in which everything is out of balance or has been degraded.But I think one could easily read the orgy sequence positively (especially in light of the mellow Grateful Dead tune that accompanies it--as opposed to the off-kilter stuff used elsewhere), and it's been argued elsewhere that, beginning with L'eclisse, Antonioni began to view eroticism more positively. There doesn't seem to me anything degrading about it, or even unsatisfactory (as in L'avventura, where Sandro fails to make Anna cum).


I am not sure what you mean here. Help me out - as you have been so kind to do so thus far.I'm asking how the film draws a parallel between Mark's lack of awareness and escapist fantasies, and our perhaps deteriorated ideas of a moral compass and romantic love?


Thomas in Blowup is quite reactionary. He attempts to place himself above his culture and is something of an outcast. He thinks himself an outsider, but Antonioni suggests that really he is quite the same. Claudia in L'Avventura is disillusioned with her peers and modernity. She begins to have trouble understanding people's behaviors, and she seems to be trying to escape - something. Anna, just as Claudia, perhaps arrived at this sentiment much sooner, and successfully escaped modernity altogether, entirely vanishing from the screen. In this sense, the modern world has decayed from its values and these characters are searching for a return, a becoming, or a reclamation of now dead values, or maybe a discovery of new ones.Wouldn't the discovery of new values be progressive rather than reactionary? It seems to me that the characters are neither calling for a return to the old nor abolishing it altogether (although Antonioni's "eros is sick" statement clearly is).


Huh?I was simply wondering what made the characters reactionaries.

[Izzy Black]

Part of this is a misunderstanding on my part of what you meant when you said that I said the narrative was inept, which I took to be casting aspersions on Antonioni's de-dramatization strategies, which is what I was primarily interested in when I wrote my blog entry: How does Antonioni, here and in his other films, violate classical norms. If the film doesn't have a strong message, I don't think it's because Antonioni's de-dramatization of the narrative undercuts whatever point he's trying to make (his other films that I've seen have clear messages), but because of the film's failure to really deal in depth with the counterculture.

I understood the emphasis of your blog review. The issue is that I do not think you are giving enough credit to how this de-dramatization effects narrative. Without a pointed political critique, in your view, the de-dramatization lives little else to chew on in terms of narrative. Which is to say, we are not given a traditional dramatic narrative nor political food for thought. As such, the de-dramatization works against itself, or rather, Antonioni's technique is not effective in the way that it is in his other films. You say things like, "the film elides a number of important events", "Antonioni presents it so casually that it hardly seems to matter at all", and "But if the cause is that real for him, shouldn't we have some clue as to what's radicalized him?" Clearly, the de-dramatization of character is the very thing that leads to the thinly conceived characters in the film. This is why it is odd to me you think you somehow separated the issue of inept narrative and de-dramatization in your review. What you did was explain Antonioni's narrative process in the film and how it was ultimately ineffective. You explained what Antonioni emphasized as important and unimportant in the film, but what he ultimately emphasized resulted in a film about nothing much. He subverted the necessary elements that might have given his characters a bit more weight and thematic development. It does not work here, I get it. I think Kael and everyone else agrees. We all understand Antonioni's aesthetic. For example, even Amazon.com writes: "Antonioni's nonrealistic approach to American counterculture myths, his loose and sluggish narrative, and the dialogue (credited to Fred Gardner, Sam Shepard, Tonino Guerra, Clare Peploe, and Antonioni) caused Zabriskie Point to be poorly received when it was first released." His non-realistic counterculture approach and "loose" and "sluggish" narrative are precisely the result of his technique.


But in L'eclisse, those points are made through other channels as well (like the narrative) that compliment their formal articulation.

Honestly, not really. I flesh out these points better in my L'Eclisse essay (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/journal_view.php?journalid=223 391&entryid=466345&view=public). (Warning: Beware of possible grammatical mistakes, indecipherable parlance, and other linguistic atrocities). These grotesque elements of a domineering environment and modern world that entirely engulfs and traps individuals is only revealed through the technique. It is, however, directly related to the general theme of alienation in Antonioni's film. Yet, this is not quite saying that he makes the same point in both the narrative and technique. Similarly, as I explained in my initial response, in Zabriskie Point, these points about character are far better fleshed out and illustrated through technique than through character development. This is why saying the film is narratively or dramatically ineffective is not saying a whole lot about what there is of value (how ever much or little) in the film. Moreover, without Antonioni's technical emphasis in films like L'Avventura and L'Eclisse, much of the film is not as interesting. The dialogue and hints at alienation that we get in these films are far less compelling on their own than they are with the manner in which Monica Vitti and Alain Delon give their performances and Antonioni creates the film. (Vittoria's casual brooding with lines like "I feel like a foreigner" are about as effective and sparse as Mark calling himself Karl Marx; what makes the difference is how Antonioni creates and films this world and environment that informs their ruminations.) When the lead characters drop entirely from the final 10 minutes of the film and we are left with nothing but his camera lens and the city, Antonioni is saying much more about his characters, the theme, and indeed, cinema, than any traditional story or screenplay would otherwise do for him.


I understand that jargon can't be avoided in discussing film any more than science or any other topic, but keep in mind that my formal training is in production rather theory, and given the East Is East mentality in both camps, I'm practically a layman.

Ah, fair enough. Quite true of the East Is East mentality. I have made a conscious effort to try and understand production as much as theory, but what I lack is probably the practical experience that you for example probably have. (I have not made any short films or worked with any major film equipment.) I am more like Bordwell in trying to understand the relationship technique and production have to theory and meaning, so I try to learn as much as I can from an academic standpoint, although I would like to do something hands-on with film someday.


Still, I'll do my best. Thanks for clarifying teleological collapse, although I'm still not sure I understand. Mark, so far as I can recall, doesn't visit any industrial sites. As I recall, he walks to a diner, which still serves food even if he doesn't have any money to buy some. The advertisements serve a function in that they create desire for consumer products. Do you mean to say then that the products advertised serve no function?

Not at all. I can see how this point might not have been clear. What I mean is the city is historically functional in the industrial sense. It is a place of communal production, sharing, commerce, and growth. But in the post-industrial world, the city can become distilled and overrun by product-placement and commercialism that it becomes a city of mere self-reference and signification rather than production, service, exchange, and community.


It means she's wrapped up in the ills rather than the escaping.

I see, but I do not feel my original wording (though admittedly awkward) is necessarily inaccurate. She is wrapped up in trying to escape the ills of corporatism.


But he's not killed for shooting the cop but stealing the plane (or rather, trying to return it). In the film, to be a cop-killing fugitive isn't a dire situation because he's never brought to justice for it (unless you take his death as a kind of cosmic justice that upholds the status quo).

I agree the film does not make it a dire situation! Which is the point, I think. This is very much the case, and in part, because Mark is essentially oblivious to it. But in the echt sense, or in the real world that you and I live in, it is quite a dire situation. Not just sociologically, but in the cinematic sense too; as you say, in a traditional narrative, the film would be all about this, but not in Antonioni's. He makes it as though the situation is not dire. The point is to emphasize his fantastical and rebellious reality, in my view.


But I think one could easily read the orgy sequence positively (especially in light of the mellow Grateful Dead tune that accompanies it--as opposed to the off-kilter stuff used elsewhere), and it's been argued elsewhere that, beginning with L'eclisse, Antonioni began to view eroticism more positively. There doesn't seem to me anything degrading about it, or even unsatisfactory (as in L'avventura, where Sandro fails to make Anna cum).

This is a fair point, but at the same time, as I said above, I do not think Antonioni is outright condemning anything per se. He is not patronizing his characters or this historical event, and I think he necessarily shows the allure and attractive sensibilities of their lifestyles. I reference a late Antonioni work earlier with Beyond the Clouds. The eroticism is more charged here than in his early work, but it is still unfulfilled. Usually the lack of fulfillment is emphasized in the post-coital encounter. There is a great article over on Senses of Cinema on the use of nudity and sex in Antonioni's films that better articulates this point. The article notes that what sets Zabriskie Point's use of sex and nudity apart is the abstract and fantastical nature of it. I understand this as the escapism of his characters, which is presented as euphoric and transcendent, but something that is clearly disconnected from reality in its amoral Utopian sensualism. The emphasis is on their disconnection from the real world - that is, their disillusionment and disaffection with society. Sex is not always degrading in Antonioni's film, but it is almost always used to underlie much of the same themes.


I'm asking how the film draws a parallel between Mark's lack of awareness and escapist fantasies, and our perhaps deteriorated ideas of a moral compass and romantic love?

Hopefully I have better explained myself above.


Wouldn't the discovery of new values be progressive rather than reactionary? It seems to me that the characters are neither calling for a return to the old nor abolishing it altogether (although Antonioni's "eros is sick" statement clearly is).

I see what you are getting at, but I am not using "reactionary" in the often familiar left and right binary sense of the term - where anytime you use the word reactionary you are referring to right-wing conservativism or something of the likes. What 'reactionary' at its most essential means is those who are reacting against the current changes of society. You could call this a kind of conservativism insofar as it seeks a return to old or an avoidance of the change, but it is dangerous to look at it in the superficially political sense. (We could call Italian neorealism reactionary, but certainly not politically conservative. The terms are not generic.) Antonioni is a modernist filmmaker, so he shares this sentiment with those of the "Lost Generation" of the 30s and 40s, as it were. Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and Fitzgerald certainly scorned the post-war capitalism and technological advances emerging in the modern world, and as such, felt out of place with society. They detected the loss of value and meaning with the rise of this age, but that does not mean they were not at the same rate progressive. For example, their technique was radically progressive compared to the centuries of literature before them. I do think you can still be reactionary (against the specific current changes) and still have a progressive mind for the future. This is why I called them reactionaries rather than conservatives.


I was simply wondering what made the characters reactionaries.

Fair enough.

[B-side]

I watched The Red and the White and, frankly, I wasn't very impressed. While I dug some of the camera work, and Jancso's decision to utilize the long take, the film essentially boiled down to a series of brutal circumstances with little nuance or reason for you to care outside of your obligatory moral obligations. While I likely seem dismissive of any subtle thematic content, I'm not, I just didn't see anything outside of the lack of morality in war.

[Qrazy]

I watched The Red and the White and, frankly, I wasn't very impressed. While I dug some of the camera work, and Jancso's decision to utilize the long take, the film essentially boiled down to a series of brutal circumstances with little nuance or reason for you to care outside of your obligatory moral obligations. While I likely seem dismissive of any subtle thematic content, I'm not, I just didn't see anything outside of the lack of morality in war.

Heh, or perhaps you're dismissive precisely because you didn't see anything, not because it's not there. You note the use of the long take but you don't really note it's purpose. Jancso is primarily a formal director. The meaning of his films is communicated by the movement of his camera and his actors in relation to one another. Since I haven't seen the film in a while I'll instead use others thoughts to shed some light on the film...

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/60/60jansco.html


Watching The Red and the White, you can't help but notice that this carefully designed artfulness seems at odds in the staging of atrocities and off-handed killing. Jancsó's formalism could come off as contrived and heartless, but it doesn't. Instead, in an upside-down flip-flop of audience expectation, his controlled aesthetic acts as a dissonance effect that vibrates expressively with scenes of violence, torture, and shame.

A pretty nurse (Krystyna Mikolajewksa) has an erotic encounter with a fugitive Red, and when the Whites appear out of nowhere, tries desperately to save him. As a ruse, she strips to bathe naked in the river, thinking exposed female flesh will distract the soldiers. She's wrong; they find and kill him anyway. Still naked, she watches the killing and then crouches into a fetal position — shamed and distraught. Jancsó photographs it all in a long shot that de-eroticizes the nudity and emphasizes the helplessness of the doomed nurse.

As the Whites work on her further, she's coerced into revealing the hiding places of the other Bolsheviks, but when a troop of Reds suddenly enters to wipe the slate clean, she's casually condemned to death for this last-minute betrayal. A few fellow nurses try to plead her case with the commander. "She was forced to do it," they say, but their words are uttered into a vacuum. Minutes later you hear the staccato pops of the off-screen execution — clean, concise, and with no histrionics. It's one of the bitterest moments in the film. Deftly, with minute touches, Jancsó has built up our sympathies for the pretty, desirable nurse and now she's swiftly and meaninglessly dead — a cipher denied what the movies have hard-wired us to expect: a noble, or ignoble, death scene.

Jancso consistently undermines the role of the 'hero' in this film and keeps the viewer always at a distance from the atrocities of war. This film is the antithesis of Spielbergian war films, it is nearly completely robbed of sentimentality. You say that you wish to 'care' about these characters or the proceedings but that's precisely what Jancso doesn't want you to do. Which is not to say he doesn't want you to care about the film. But he doesn't want you to care about the narrative, he wants to demonstrate the repetitious and hollow nature of warfare.

This is not just the typical war is bad message. It's a statement on the circular and arbitrary nature of war. Similarly although we're given a protagonist for a while Jancso does not want us to place much more value on him than any other life lost in the course of the narrative. War is blind and brutal and it kills men on both sides of the battle regardless of ideological leaning. The film seems cold and emotionally distant in order to fully demonstrate the utter futility of the proceedings of war and to create a naturalistic statement about the indifference of the world around us to the plans and goals of human beings.

[B-side]

Jancso consistently undermines the role of the 'hero' in this film and keeps the viewer always at a distance from the atrocities of war. This film is the antithesis of Spielbergian war films, it is nearly completely robbed of sentimentality. You say that you wish to 'care' about these characters or the proceedings but that's precisely what Jancso doesn't want you to do. Which is not to say he doesn't want you to care about the film. But he doesn't want you to care about the narrative, he wants to demonstrate the repetitious and hollow nature of warfare.

This is not just the typical war is bad message. It's a statement on the circular and arbitrary nature of war. Similarly although we're given a protagonist for a while Jancso does not want us to place much more value on him than any other life lost in the course of the narrative. War is blind and brutal and it kills men on both sides of the battle regardless of ideological leaning. The film seems cold and emotionally distant in order to fully demonstrate the utter futility of the proceedings of war and to create a naturalistic statement about the indifference of the world around us to the plans and goals of human beings.

It certainly makes sense in retrospect. Not sure how much I can enjoy a film so determined to keep the audience at a distance, but this certainly helps bring the film into a better perspective. Thanks.

[Qrazy]

It certainly makes sense in retrospect. Not sure how much I can enjoy a film so determined to keep the audience at a distance, but this certainly helps bring the film into a better perspective. Thanks.

Fair, it's a reasonable position that you don't engage with it and thereby enjoy it less. I just find that distancing effect to be worthy of defense and that it makes for a rewarding if not emotionally affecting viewing experience. You might enjoy Cantata the most of his films.

[B-side]

Fair, it's a reasonable position that you don't engage with it and thereby enjoy it less. I just find that distancing effect to be worthy of defense and that it makes for a rewarding if not emotionally affecting viewing experience. You might enjoy Cantata the most of his films.

Unfortunately, Netflix only has Private Vices Public Virtues and Electra, My Love outside of The Red and the White.

[Qrazy]

Unfortunately, Netflix only has Private Vices Public Virtues and Electra, My Love outside of The Red and the White.

Haven't seen either so... *shrug*. Have you seen Malle's Le Feu Follet (fire within)? That one reminds me somewhat of Cantata and vice versa.

[B-side]

Haven't seen either so... *shrug*. Have you seen Malle's Le Feu Follet (fire within)? That one reminds me somewhat of Cantata and vice versa.

Y'know what's odd? I pushed that film up to the top of my queue quite a while back and just had it hovering near the top, waiting for something to push me over the edge to just keep it in the #1 spot and finally watch it. Pretty sure it's still sitting near the top somewhere.:P

[Qrazy]

Y'know what's odd? I pushed that film up to the top of my queue quite a while back and just had it hovering near the top, waiting for something to push me over the edge to just keep it in the #1 spot and finally watch it. Pretty sure it's still sitting near the top somewhere.:P

Anticipate a fun night full of existential dread haha.

[B-side]

Anticipate a fun night full of existential dread haha.

Mmm. Existential dread. Nary a subject more cheerful, I must say.

[Spaceman Spiff]

You need to PM me your email.

PM'd.

Many thanks and reps.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Way too busy to post extended thoughts now, but I ended up scalping The Round Up (I had totally forgotten about an incredibly important engagement at the same time as that screening), but I did see The Red and the White, which was pretty much the best movie ever.

[Qrazy]

Way too busy to post extended thoughts now, but I ended up scalping The Round Up (I had totally forgotten about an incredibly important engagement at the same time as that screening), but I did see The Red and the White, which was pretty much the best movie ever.

Nice!

[Spaceman Spiff]

Nice!

Indeed. A hall-of-famer, to be certain. BEAUTIFUL print too. It was one of the most entrancing films I've ever seen.

[soitgoes...]

My two most recent Jancsó viewings completely blow away his two previous films I've seen, The Round-Up and Red Psalm. I don't know if I'm just jiving with him right now and I completely missed the boat the first time 'round or what. I should say that The Round-Up is pretty good, but man, Red Psalm bored me to death. I've got Silence and Cry on tap next.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Yeah, I find that I really love the "hypnotic war movies about chaotic and arbitrary violence and death, that take place in the countryside" subgenre (see: Come and See or Thin Red Line)

[MacGuffin]

Yeah, I find that I really love the "hypnotic war movies about chaotic and arbitrary violence and death, that take place in the countryside" subgenre (see: Come and See or Thin Red Line)

You should see La France then. Almost criminally underseen with some of the coolest musical numbers.

[soitgoes...]

Yeah, I find that I really love the "hypnotic war movies about chaotic and arbitrary violence and death, that take place in the countryside" subgenre (see: Come and See or Thin Red Line)
Barabas' A Song About the Gray Pigeon and The Bells Toll for the Barefooted as well as Kachyna's Carriage to Vienna all fit in this wonderful subgenre, and were all recently seen by me and deemed grand. The Eastern European filmmakers own these types of films.

[MacGuffin]

The tone of the trailer is similar to that of the movie (and it features that awesome song).

ayBQIRPA0iU

[Boner M]

My Way Home is so beautifully made on a scene-by-scene basis that I'm disappointed it fell slightly short of a masterpiece for me. Even more so than The Red and the White, I found it extraordinary at embodying theme on formal terms, and particularly showing how the mutual imprint of landscape on the psyche of its two main characters collapses the boundaries of ideology and language. As result, the tentative friendship between them is touching without explicating psychological motivation, but never veering into sentimentality either. But I felt the whole film lacked rhythm between scenes, and accordingly felt wayyy longer than it was, and the final shot was little more than a glib nod to The 400 Blows. A shame, since shards of some of the most effective filmmaking I've seen are present here.

[soitgoes...]

My Way Home is so beautifully made on a scene-by-scene basis that I'm disappointed it fell slightly short of a masterpiece for me. Even more so than The Red and the White, I found it extraordinary at embodying theme on formal terms, and particularly showing how the mutual imprint of landscape on the psyche of its two main characters collapses the boundaries of ideology and language. As result, the tentative friendship between them is touching without explicating psychological motivation, but never veering into sentimentality either. But I felt the whole film lacked rhythm between scenes, and accordingly felt wayyy longer than it was, and the final shot was little more than a glib nod to The 400 Blows. A shame, since shards of some of the most effective filmmaking I've seen are present here.I liked it a bit more than you. It would be my second favorite of his. It was like a warm up to his later films, the first third very much has a The Red and the White vibe, with the lead being placed under control then released then back under control in a matter of 15 minutes. Then Jancsó went into coming of age mode. I love the releationship between the two guys. Watching it build from the Hungarian wanting to escape to him alienating himself from his countrymen in order to save him. This would be the film that I would peg as the best entry point to Jancsó.

[Qrazy]

I liked it a bit more than you. It would be my second favorite of his. It was like a warm up to his later films, the first third very much has a The Red and the White vibe, with the lead being placed under control then released then back under control in a matter of 15 minutes. Then Jancsó went into coming of age mode. I love the releationship between the two guys. Watching it build from the Hungarian wanting to escape to him alienating himself from his countrymen in order to save him. This would be the film that I would peg as the best entry point to Jancsó.

Try to check out Cantata sometime soon as well.