NE Arthound

The title derives from the Book of Revelations when the fourth seal is opened and the voice of the fourth beast say, "Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him." This 1985 anti-war film directed by Elem Klimov opens with two boys playing at war, but in a terrifyingly surreal manner, heightened by the younger boy emitting grotesque, chilling words that sound more beastlike than human. A hyper-realistic quality inhabits the entire film, made more horrifying by sound design which sounds as if we are experiencing everything through 14 yr old Flyora's eyes AND ears...there are sounds that occur throughout...both identifiable and all too realistic, but just as often not identifiable but sounding alive/organic, what cringing or squeamish might shound like...or like life slipping away. Aleksei Kravchenko* who plays Flyora has an incredibly expressive face ...and closeups force us to feel what he's feeling. The entire film was mesmerizingly painful. I'm going to have to go read up on the cinematographer and sound design to try to understand how that contributed mightily to feeling submerged into, suffused with and overwhelmed by Flyora's experience. *In reading through Critereon's "ComeAndSee_press-notes_r1_original.pdf", I just learned that Kravchenko "had never appeared in a film before"...astonishing given his masterful performance in this film.

"Hiroshima, Mon Amour" is a poetically beautiful and haunting story dealing with memory and forgetting, trauma and healing, dreams and fears, love, witnessing and sharing, emotions and time. The prologue is remarkable cinematography that encapsulates the underlying themes. The past, present and future are woven into a love affair between an actress who comes to Hiroshima to act in a film about peace and a Japanese architect. She had suffered losses during the 1944 German occupation of Nevers, France when she fell in love with a German soldier; he was off to war at the time his city was catastrophically bombed. They fall deeply in love a day before she is to return home. Their relationship leads us through their painful as well as joyous histories that live in their bodies and souls, that live in their respective countries. The reverent sharing of the past creates new memories which may mean they alter or forget the past. A powerful film you need to watch. "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" directed by Alain Renais, 1959

So astonishingly vapid and bad it will leave you breathless with laughter.

"Last Year at Marienbad" directed by Alain Resnais (French New Wave/Left Bank), 1961. Set in a grand estate in Marienbad (or was it someplace else) last year (or was it?), aristocrats mill around, chat, dance...but sometimes are motionless, suspended in time. Violinists play...but we hear funereal organ music. A handsome man (X) is obsessed with a beautiful woman (A) who may be married to a dour, forbidding looking man (M). X reminds A that they met here before; A can't seem to recall, but at times seems to, at times rebuffs him. Memories fracture and rearrange themselves; is forgetting because of pain...or forbidden pleasure...or do these people really exist? What really happened? Did violence occur? If there was violence, who was the perpetrator and who the victim? Or maybe it was all imagined. Whose memories are these? Why are they so elusive? This film draws you in, you'll hang on every image, every word, every gesture trying to determine what you are experiencing...for it is an experience rather than passively watching a movie. (If you haven't yet seen Resnais' "Hiroshima, Mon Amour", do...Resnais is passionate about trying to understand memory, forgetting, trauma, obsessions.)

Pretentious, boring, shallow drivel.