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.
Ed. note: Establishing Shot will be “dark” throughout the rest of December and the beginning of January as the Cinema takes a short break, but we’ll be back soon with all of the great, original writing you know and love!
Jesse Pasternack, contributor | One from the Heart: Reprise (2024)
One from the Heart: Reprise is one of legendary writer-director Francis Ford Coppola’s more underrated films. While it didn’t do well financially when it first came out, time has been kind to its critical reputation. Today, those who seek it out (or at least the version I saw which Coppola recently re-edited) will be rewarded with one of the most visually dazzling and unconventional musicals I have seen in a long time.
This film takes place in Las Vegas and is about a couple named Hank (Frederic Forrest) and Frannie (Teri Garr). Hank is proud to have just bought their home, while Frannie is eager to travel more. This leads to tension between them which causes Hank to have an affair with a trapeze artist named Leila (Natassja Kinski), while Frannie pursues a passionate relationship with a singing waiter named Ray (Raul Julia). As a beautiful night turns into a bright day, Hank wonders if his relationship with Frannie is really over.
Coppola has directed some of the most visually memorable films in cinema history, like The Godfather (1972) or Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). The imaginative imagery that he created with his collaborators Vittorio Storaro (who was also the cinematographer on Apocalypse Now [1979]) and Ronald Víctor García in this film is just as astonishing as in his better known ones. The expressive lighting expertly accentuates its characters’ emotions. Some shots, like one of a gigantic and glittering Leila dwarfing Hank as he looks up at her or an early tracking shot of a stunning recreation of the Las Vegas strip, are so beautiful that I will never forget them.
In addition to its magnificent feasts for the eyes, One from the Heart: Reprise also has an interesting approach to being a musical. Most films in that genre supply their key narrative pleasure (musical numbers) in the form of characters singing and dancing to nondiegetic music (West Side Story [1961], The Wizard of Oz [1939]) or performing musical numbers diegetically, like Inside Llewyn Davis (2012) or Sing Street (2016). In all four of those movies, the musical numbers take place on screen. In contrast, despite two musical numbers performed nondiegetically by its characters before our eyes, the vast majority of them consist of songs sung offscreen by Tom Waits (who also wrote them) and Crystal Gayle. The fact that you can’t see Waits and Gayle perform adds a frustrating quality to the film which perfectly accentuates how Hank and Frannie feel about the troubles they have with their relationship. In addition, Waits’s glamorous yet gloomy songs wonderfully suffuse the film with a spirit of melancholy romanticism which sets it apart from other, cheerier films in that genre. One from the Heart: Reprise deserves to be remembered more. Its dazzling visuals, mixed with an unusual take on the musical genre, make it one of the more memorable films I have seen in a long time. If you see it, it will linger in your memory, either vividly or fondly half-forgotten, like a beloved song.
Noni Ford, contributor | Heretic (2024)
When I walked into the theater to watch Heretic, I caught the tail-end of a conversation two women were having about Notting Hill. One of Hugh Grant’s more well-known romantic comedies, they caught me listening and assured me this was very different from that, but also emphasized how good he was in this role. I had of course seen the trailer for Heretic but had only gleaned that the genre was horror and a sort of riddle-laden story. While it is both of those things, I was not prepared for the amount of gore onscreen — all of which works within the movie. Did I have to turn away once? Short answer: yes. And yet I do feel that the violence in the film was more restrained than it could have been. If you are a horror fanatic, this film would probably not be your cup of tea; it’s very wordy and much more about the tension than it is about the horror. Without revealing too much, I believe the film to be less exciting and more subtle in its messages. This is a film that is essentially about faith and focuses more on suspense than jump scares to keep you engaged. And Hugh Grant, somehow playing into some of his early career charm for this rather monstrous character, does give a performance that keeps us the audience in his grasp from the beginning till the end.
Chris Forrester, contributor | Apur Sansar (1959)
Few film series in the history of the medium feel so quietly titanic as Satyajit Ray’s Apu films (1955-1959), a trilogy of literary adaptations drawn from a pair of Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay novels outlining, across three distinct periods in the life of the eponymous character, his upbringing, coming of age, and adulthood. The first two films, Pather Panchali (1955) and Aparajito (1956), were completed back-to-back, and while they are tremendous achievements in establishing the core character and style of the series, it’s the trilogy’s conclusory film, Apur Sansar (1959), that marks its defining achievement. Picking up some years following the conclusion of Aparajito, which sees Apu newly alone in the world following the deaths of his closest family members across the prior two films (his young sister, Durga, dies at the end of Pather Panchali and both his mother and father pass in Aparajito), its inciting incident is a reconnection with an old friend that in turn leads to a wedding, all as Apu himself stumbles his way through a period of great loneliness.
For all its great sadnesses, the entire trilogy (and its capper especially) reverberates with a great hopefulness — early in Apur Sansar, the aspiring writer Apu explains the protagonist of a story he wishes to write, a figure all but explicitly in his own image, who has been put upon time and again by fate, class, and circumstance but who nonetheless still seeks love and purpose. In a later moment of great pain, he lets go of this story and its hopeful vision of his life atop a mountain, and as the pages flutter away in the wind we wonder whether this casting aside is acceptance or abandonment. But the great masterstroke of Ray’s film, and indeed the entire trilogy that contains it, is that with a composure of if-not-optimism-then-hopeful-realism, the story trods along through this painful downturn, toward neither greater tragedy nor sudden hope but simply onward, becoming in the process a deeply felt portrait of human endurance. We can’t write our own stories, but we can’t abandon them, either; instead, we must choose to live them.
Watch the trailer here.