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.
Jesse Pasternack, contributor | Maestro (2023)
Maestro is a visually astonishing portrait of Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and his marriage to Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). It contains some of my favorite scenes from a movie that I have seen this year and proves that Cooper is an exciting director.
After a short scene set in 1987, Maestro flashes back to 1943, when Bernstein was a young and unknown assistant conductor for the New York Philharmonic. Unexpectedly called to conduct when the Philharmonic’s regular conductor is ill (and without having a single rehearsal beforehand), Bernstein gives an excellent performance which propels him to stardom. Shortly thereafter he meets Montealegre, a young actor, at a party. They begin dating and eventually marry as Bernstein’s career continues to skyrocket. But their marriage has its struggles, not least of which is Bernstein repeatedly cheating on her with men.
My favorite thing about Maestro is the technical style with which Cooper and director of photography Matthew Libatique use to tell their story. An early sequence in which a young Bernstein gets his big break, which begins in almost total darkness and then finds Bernstein running through Carnegie Hall as his score for On the Waterfront blares, sets the tone and the high bar which it repeatedly excels.
While the setpieces that Cooper and Libatique craft (including a thrilling climax set in a church as Bernstein conducts) are beautiful, it is how they film the smaller moments which prove that Cooper is a great director. He gives a haunting quality to Bernstein’s marriage to Montealegre by frequently shooting their arguments in long shots. A Thanksgiving-set scene between them demonstrates Cooper’s confidence in his material by being shot from one setup with the only form of editing being excellent blocking as the two characters move around in the frame. It is a testament to Cooper’s skill that these scenes and other small moments — namely every close-up of Mulligan as her character processes her life with Bernstein — feel as vibrant and interesting as the larger ones. Maestro boasts fantastic setpieces and beautiful images, in both luminous black and white as well as vivid color, that I enjoyed greatly. It lingers pleasantly in the mind after you have seen it, like a good song. Perhaps the best compliment that I can pay this film is that, at this moment, I’m listening to music conducted by Bernstein as I write.
Chris Forrester, contributor | Exotica (1994)
One of the more striking films I saw this month was Atom Egoyan’s Exotica, an elusive drama about navigating the transactionality of relationships under capitalism and coping with loss within that framework that reveals itself slowly and deliberately to the viewer as if a monster luring prey into its lair. The lair, then, to stretch out the metaphor, might be the titular strip club, a dark room adorned with flashing lights, fake plants and two-way mirrors where dancers perform for silent, watchful patrons and the almost-satiating-but-not-quite closeness of a table dance becomes an uncharacterizable balm for a man coping with profound loss.
That man man is Francis, a tax auditor, and he fits snugly into a tapestry of characters (a dancer, a DJ, the club’s owner, a pet shop manager, a customs inspector) whose interactions across the breadth of the film comprise a web of crisscrossing happenstance that reverberates with deep loneliness. Egoyan is a beautiful shaper of narrative, and the film moves with a distinct poise that compounds that loneliness into something at once immediate and unknowable, punctuated by glimpses at a mystery we’re not yet aware is unfolding before us. It’s a real achievement of a film — a well-oiled narrative machine that breathes, bleeds, and aches as if made of flesh, and in doing so illuminates the messier crevices of its characters’ lives to quite moving effect.
Michaela Owens, Editor | Repeat Performance (1947)
On a sparkling New Year’s Eve night in New York City, gunshots ring out in the chic apartment of Broadway actress Sheila Page (Joan Leslie) and her husband, writer Barney Page (Louis Hayward). As their terrace doors crash open from the wind, we find a shocked Sheila looking down at Barney’s corpse with a pistol in her hand. Furious knocking at her front door brings her out of her reverie and she hurries down the backstairs to find her best friend, William (a superb Richard Basehart), an interestingly queer-coded poet. After confessing to him what she has done, Sheila talks about how she wishes she could go back in time and do things differently, like stop Barney from meeting the woman who became his lover and thus set in motion that evening’s tragedy. Suddenly, Sheila finds herself transported back to the start of the year. Realizing her wish has been granted, she sets out to fix all the mistakes that led to Barney’s death — but discovers that fate can’t be changed so easily.
Repeat Performance is a fantastic film noir with a supernatural twist that is never really explained and doesn’t actually need to be. Watching Sheila struggle with the inevitable is fascinating and even a little heartbreaking, but the film is crafted with such style and elegance that the heaviness of its material — Barney’s alcoholism and growing resentment of his wife, Sheila’s complicated feelings toward her husband (does she love him or does she just feel grateful to him for making her a star?), William’s surprising storyline that includes a vengeful benefactress — doesn’t fully hit you until the credits roll. The film should feel like a nightmare, and yet the incredible cast (including my guy Tom Conway in probably the most subtly sweet role he ever played as Sheila’s smitten producer), L. William O’Connell’s mesmerizing cinematography, Joan Leslie’s insanely beautiful wardrobe by Oleg Cassini, and Walter Bullock’s wonderful script make this move along like a dream.