The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade

1967 Movie Club Selection

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.

First things first--I don't remember the character's name, but there's a guy in this thing who has the best hair ever.

There are a great deal of words in this thing. Some, especially a lot of the ones that were sung, were incomprehensible. And a lot of them flew right over my little head. I was in bad need of subtitles to help me out. Even with subtitles, I doubt I'm intelligent enough to attempt swimming in the various layers of Marat/Sade. Freewill vs. predetermination, the power of the individual vs. the community, equality, freedom, justice, censorship, nihilism. Heavy stuff, and this is a challenging and intense experience. Draining even. The style instantly draws you in, almost makes you feel trapped in there with the inmates of the asylum. The single setting is sparse, but I like how some of the features of the bath house are utilized. The camera's definitely not afraid to get right in there, allow you to get intimate with the crevices of the actors' faces. At times, this is almost a movie you can smell. There are a couple of scenes that I just loved. First a "Marat Nightmare" scene with steamy effects, demonic silhouettes, and disorienting music. The second was a scene that started with a chant (in rounds) about "general copulation" and ended with some hot dry-humping orgy action. The ensemble cast is excellent. Patrick Magee is haunting as the Marquis, and I also liked Ian Richardson as the other titular character. My favorite characters, other than the hair guy, were the clown-make-upped chorus that would pop up and sing the weird little songs. Marat/Sade is heady stuff, but it's impossible to take your eyes off the screen as the camera maneuvers through all those crazy mo-fos. It's intoxicating and exhausting, and I wish I was enough of an intellectual to fully appreciate it.

So, fellow Movie Clubbers, what did all y'all think?

The Right Stuff

1983 airplane and spaceship movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Traces the advances of flight and the U.S. space program from the time Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier to the training and travels of the Mercury 7 astronauts.

Der Stoff Aus Dem Die Helden Sind is a thoroughly engaging, light-hearted breath of fresh air. There were a lot of ways this material could have been approached. This movie almost fictionalizes the events and characters, and never steers away from an opportunity for a little humor. Instead of inflating the hero aspect, the script makes these pilots and astronauts very very human, and I really liked all the scenes with the bumbling politicians. Their scenes aren't far off from Abbott and Costello routines or an Ionesco play. The scenes with the flights are very realistic without being overly special-effecty, and even though anybody with even a rudimentary knowledge of this period of history knows what happens with the characters, they still manage to hold the tension. At six hours and forty-three minutes, this movie is very long, but it's never boring. The music was a bit much a lot of the time, and the sudden narration at the end is weird. Overall, I really enjoyed this very warm look at the Cold War, a movie that puts a human face on the wacky and wild world of space travel. If nothing else, this movie may have inspired me to incorporate horses into my sex life.

Cory always wanted to be an astronaut as a little boy. Or a shark. Watching movies about them was the next best thing. He recommended The Right Stuff.

"Breaker" Morant

1980 war movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: During the Boer War, a war that nobody's even heard of, three Australians are put on trial for killing Boer prisoners-of-war and a missionary.

"Breaker" Morant is a movie that just seems different, and I think I finally figured out why. As I watched, the pacing seemed off. After finishing, however, I realized what is different about the pacing--there's nothing wasted here. Everything the director shows us contributes to either the flashback sequences or the courtroom stuff. Most films like this would take a different approach, I think, with superfluous character development or extraneous scenes designed to pull at our guts, but this just lays out the facts, revealing them incrementally in the flashbacks or the courtroom revelations. Of course, the way the story unfolds is a little different too. There's nothing that really dazzles in this. The performances are great from top to bottom, but none of the actors draw attention to themselves and give any of those obvious award-winning performances. Edward Woodward (The Wicker Man) is great as the title character, but Bryan Brown and Lewis Fitzgerald are also good as the other two lieutenants on trial. And Chris Haywood, providing some lighter moments as Corporal Sharp, was also really good. The war scenes are exciting, but the court room scenes are even more powerful. I really liked the flashback structure, and knowing nothing about the true story this is based on, I was surprised by how wrong I was about what actually happened or how things were going to turn out. This raises interesting questions about war, specifically the idea of "war crimes," and justice, and it's really a nice little gem of a movie.

Note: I may or may not have given this movie a bonus point for a bawdy limerick. Knowing me, I probably did since "bawdy limerick" is my favorite literary genre.

This Cory recommendation wasn't one I looked forward to watching or really expected to like. I guess I should trust him a little more.

A Man for All Seasons

1966 English king movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: More history, so I don't even know where to begin. It's all about Sir Thomas More and how he pisses everybody off, especially King Henry the VIII who wants to end a son-less marriage with Catherine, a woman he no longer finds hot, and marry Anne Boleyn, historically regarded as the Paris Hilton of the day. Sir Thomas More's a religious nut with too much of a conscience and refuses to first agree with Henry that this is all a good idea and later to take an oath which makes him a treasoner. More's head is removed (Oh, snap!), a decapitation which ruins his chances to take future oaths. Ironically, oath-taking was one of his favorite hobbies.


It's just great watching a collection of great actors (I believe the collective noun for that is a fluther of actors, just like the collective noun for a group of jellyfish) playing with such great writing, and A Man for All Seasons has a fluther of great actors and some terrific, literary dialogue. Paul Scofield won the Oscar playing a walking oxymoron, loudly silent and bursting with a calm fervor, but he couldn't have done it without the help from the supporters to bounce these lines off. Roseanne Barr gives a subdued performance as the Jabba-esque and weasly Cardinal Wolsey. George Segal is just right as the despicable Cromwell while Sonny Bono manages to be even more despicable with the brown-nosed Richie Rich character, with just the right amount of shadiness and flattery. And who wouldn't appreciate the comic stylings of Buddy Hackett as the Duke of Shipoopi or Vincent Price's unusual but interesting take on the Jiminy Cricket character. And I really dug the way Henry Winkler plays such a daffy Henry VIII. My favorite scene in the movie is when Henry jumps from his boat to a muddy shore, looks down at the mess he's splashed on himself, and starts laughing hysterically, joined in laughter by his entourage only after he glances back at them to see if they're laughing. Only an actor as good as the Fonz could manage to bring the funny without causing an otherwise serious film to completely lose focus. I really like the bits of humor peppered into the story. Lines drip with irony, murky cinematography (the film starts with shots of shadowy gargoyles) adds a sense of foreboding, and the tension caused by a tug-of-war match between God and government that threatens to tear poor More apart builds at a perfect pace. The movie's a pessimistic and timeless treatise on the negative effects that can result when a man actually follows his conscience and on how actions, or a lack of actions, speak more powerfully than any words can. There are a lot of ways the last scene could have been handled, but I thought the chilling and elegant ending this one has is about perfect. That a movie based on English history didn't completely bore me is a plus, and I wasn't bored by a single minute of A Man for All Seasons.

Note: Due to Blogger issues, I had to write this three times. The first one was probably the best.