Every month, Establishing Shot brings you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series reflects the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema and demonstrates the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked one film that they saw this month that they couldn’t wait to share with others. Keep reading to find out what discoveries these cinephiles have made, as well as some of the old friends they’ve revisited.
Laura Ivins, contributor | Midsommar (2019)
Horror films are usually dark. Not just dark in content, but in visual aesthetic. Most of the action occurs at night, and low-key lighting is a staple. Modern horror directors are adept at obscuring information in shadows or just off-frame and playing with what they allow you to see and when.
Midsommar operates differently. Most of its action occurs outdoors during the daytime, and not only tha, it’s largely set in a geographic location that experiences midnight sun during the summer. It never really gets dark. We don’t have shadows obscuring large parts of the frame. The film is very bright, very high-key in most scenes.
Far from dampening the horror, this perpetual brightness enhances the unsettled emotions cultivated by the film. Our characters enter a community that initially seems idyllic, complete with girls in white dresses and flower crowns in their hair, but as we peel back the layers, we find a cult that reveals increasingly disturbing behavior. The juxtaposition between depravity and a picturesque visual aesthetic works similar to Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975), lending a sense of the uncanny to the action onscreen.
Jesse Pasternack, contributor | Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
Sansho the Bailiff is the best film that I’ve seen this year. It boasts a great narrative and beautiful filmmaking. Once you see it, you’ll never forget it.
This film takes place in the Heian period of feudal Japan, which a title card informs us is “when Japan had not yet emerged from the Dark Ages and mankind had yet to awaken as human beings.” A kind-hearted governor of a province is banished by a feudal lord and instructs his son Zushio (Masahiko Tsugawa, Yoshiaki Hanayagi) and daughter Anju (Kyôko Kagawa) in the importance of being merciful before they go to live with relatives. Eventually his wife Tamaki (Kinuyo Tanaka) gets separated from her children and they are all sold into slavery. Zushio struggles to stay true to his father’s teachings as he navigates the brutal world of the manor owned by the villainous Sansho the Bailiff (Eitarō Shindō).
A key element in what makes Sansho the Bailiff feel so engrossing is its story. Screenwriters Fuji Yahiro and Yoshikata Yoda are unafraid to confront the brutal nature of the world surrounding their characters but do so in effective, economical ways which do not feel excessive. One of the most devastating is when they reveal how Zushio has adapted to life on the manor when he is ordered to punish an old man who has tried to escape. They excel at making their story’s heartbreaking moments and twists an organic reflection of their setting’s great capacity for cruelty and small room for unexpectedly moving acts of kindness.
But while this film has an excellent screenplay, it would not have reached its full potential if it did not have an abundance of beautiful imagery. Director Kenji Mizoguchi and cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (who was also the cinematographer of Rashōmon [1950] and Mizoguchi’s final film, A Street of Shame [1956]) create some of the most beautiful shots that I have seen in a long time. Mizoguchi is well known for his long takes which are full of fluid camera movements, and there are plenty of those in this film. But it also has a lot of stationary shots which are fascinating as well, especially the ones which have frames within frames to suggest the feelings of entrapment that this world creates in its most vulnerable characters. Mizoguchi and Miyagawa treat each shot like a canvas that they fill in as carefully as any great painter would.
Everything that I love about this film is present in its indelibly moving final scene. Its mixture of great writing — which both defies and embraces sentimentality — and beautiful shots elevates what could’ve been an ordinary reunion into one of cinema’s greatest expressions of love and forgiveness. Whether you’re seeing it for the first time or revisiting it, Sansho the Bailiff remains a memorable cinematic experience.
Jack Miller, contributor | The Yards (2000)
The cinema of James Gray occupies a somewhat unfashionable position in contemporary American film culture. Gray, whose best-known work includes We Own the Night (2007) and Two Lovers (2008), still insists on using detailed master shots in the direction of his films, as well as archetypal narrative structures which often bare resemblance to classical tragedy. His films lack the machine-gun editing patterns and sensationalized subject matter present in today’s most buzzed-about films. As a result, Gray can feel like an outlier, a stubborn classicist working within an aggressively post-classical cinematic landscape. As the Spanish critic Carlos Losilla writes, “[Gray’s] films are still governed by the rules of staging, by a logic of forms both aesthetic and moral.” Gray brings a sensitivity to the shape and construction of his films which is sorely missing in the work of most of his contemporaries; his films speak to us mysteriously through the lost language of mise-en-scène.
Gray’s second feature, the Miramax-produced The Yards (2000), has sometimes been compared to Coppola’s Godfather films in its exploration of the dynamics of New York crime through the prism of family drama. The film stars Mark Wahlberg as Leo Handler, who gets out of prison at the beginning of the film only to find that his family has become involved in the subway-contracting business, a world of corruption and violence that he soon becomes implicated in. Gray deftly handles the various moving parts in this large ensemble piece (the cast of which also includes Joaquin Phoenix, James Caan, Charlize Theron, Ellen Burstyn, and Faye Dunaway) and is especially fine in his direction of actors. But this story of criminals and cops (a territory that Gray would revisit again in his next film, We Own the Night) seems to be a ruse for Gray to explore his true interest: an underlying sense of apocalyptic tragedy. About Gray’s films, the late, great French critic Jean Douchet once wrote, “No matter what we do, our pasts are inescapable. The past, and the Gods, weight us down with all their might.” To watch The Yards or We Own the Night is to feel the weight of the Gods.
Noni Ford, contributor | The Wonder (2022)
I think we can safely say now that every performance Florence Pugh gives is worth a watch, especially as she never plays the same role twice and her range of films is extensive. There’s action-adventure films (Black Widow), horror (Midsommar), and now science fiction (the upcoming Dune: Part 2). Her lead role was the main reason I chose to watch The Wonder, and what the film delivered was a truly dynamic story with a fantastic supporting cast and an unexpected twist of an ending. The way the director Sebastián Lelio chose to tell the story combines an element of theater with the film format that is surprising, but works well for the story we’re being told.
The film follows Lib Wright (Florence Pugh), an English nurse on a strange medical assignment in Ireland. Lib is tasked with observing an eleven-year-old girl who claims to have not eaten in months; she is to ascertain if this girl is truly a miracle or is fooling everyone through subterfuge. The girl is attracting attention not only from the press who are skeptical, but also from the local community who, spurred on by the local priest, believes the girl has truly been favored by God. In the midst of all of the questioning we find Lib, who along with the other observer brought in (a nun) has a heavy duty on her shoulders. While the council that has summoned her and the nun express the desire to find out the truth of this matter, there are machinations at play within their ranks. If the girl is truly blessed, then she has become an attraction for their small village, and this will be a boon for almost all members of the council in some way.
While they are entrusting this to Lib, there’s heavy suspicion around her and she’s viewed as an outsider as she is both English and a single woman, although she claims to be widowed. Both parties, the community and Lib, circle each other wearily throughout the story as they fight to uncover the truth or what they want to believe. During my second watch of this film, I enjoyed it just as much as the first one and even knowing the ending, the mystery of it all is hard not to get caught up in.