On the Big Screen
An unbelievable Japanese documentary, an uncomfortable Swedish meditation, and a ridiculous Hong-Kong-meets-Hollywood blockbuster. It's summer!
This summer has felt relentlessly full—full of heartache, adventures, food, sun, COVID exposures, and other time-sucking stuff. In Portland we didn’t get hot summer weather until July, so we’ve only lived this sweaty, overfilled existence for 22 days. Anyway, it’s been intense.
I’ve abandoned this newsletter for too long. One excuse is the call of summer and another is that I’m in the last two month before I’ll submit the first draft of my full manuscript of Group Living, the book! The experience of being so near the end of this stage of writing feels interminable, even as summer burns by. It’s hard to imagine I’ll ever write the last chapter, even though I work on it bit by bit every day. In the meantime, I haven’t had much room in my head for anything else. As I fall asleep I walk through the chapters like someone trying to recall the rooms of their own home and decide if the furniture should be rearranged or the walls need to be repainted. It’s unnerving to be so engrossed in something with so little perspective.
Since my mind can’t seem to probe anything besides my book very deeply, I’m taking a fast and casual approach at sharing some of the movies I’ve been watching to distract myself from my book, my noodle business, and also the Supreme Court, state anti-choice laws, Congress, heat waves in Europe, and the sadness I’ve been feeling about losing two important friends to cancer and Parkinson’s: the unforgettable Katherine Deumling who taught me so much about cooking and friendship, memorialized so beautifully by Slow Food and Street Roots, and one of the most curious and excitable people I’ve ever known, my dear friend Raf’s father Rick Spielman, memorialized with love and care in Eater. I’m not going to linger there right now, except to say that both of these people feel very present in my memory.
Thank you also to the many people who contributed to our Kiva loan to help Umi Organic grow our school food sales. This coming Tuesday, I’ll be in Spokane, Washington at the Washington School Nutrition Association trade show. In the unlikely chance you’re also there, or if you’re friends with a Washington State nutrition director, come say hi or ask them to do the same!
With no further ado, here are a few movies I enjoyed in the last month. I’m curious to hear whether people like reading these brief synopses—yes or no! If you feel strongly either way, let me know in the comments or shoot me an email. I might continue with books and food, keeping it quick and light, but first, let me know if you find this fun to read. It’s escapism, but we never really escape, do we?
Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974
Cruising my favorite streaming service by a mile, the Criterion Channel (which is a steal at $100 a year), I landed on this documentary by Kazuo Hara which follows a women he still loves who’s left him and moved to Okinawa with their son. Unwilling to let her go, he asks her permission to film her new life. What follows is one of the most intense personal portraits I’ve ever witnessed, including graphic sex scenes and, more alarming to me, child birth start to finish. This movie rattled my brain. Both the director and the woman he focuses on are extraordinarily vulnerable and also determined and forceful. It’s a staggering mix that gave me a direct taste (oh what an acidic flavor) of radical counter culture movements in the 60s and 70s and how far people had to go to feel separate and new. I don’t know if this film is brave or masochistic or both, but it’s a doozy—not a casual watch, but impossible to look away from.
I’m a big fan of the original Force Majeure by Ruben Östlund. My partner Corey named the genre it fits into “emasculation vacation.” (The other prominent entry in this category that I know of is The Loneliest Planet starring Gael Garcia Bernal.) I was excited to discover three early films by Östlund on the Criterion Channel. Involuntary is a 2008 film with an ensemble cast that lingers in moments of discomfort when someone makes a decision or fails to out of pride or social pressure. What struck me most were the compositions. His cinematography reminded me of the amazing filmmaker Roy Andersson, also a Swede, who financed all his own films with commercial work so he’d have complete artistic control, which he used to create handmade sets that each look like a painting. Like Anderrson, Östlund rarely moves his camera. He composes each shot and stays put. But unlike Andersson, although I did find his compositions striking, they are first and foremost realistic and voyeuristic. It’s like you, yourself, are sitting just beyond the conversation staring in. I felt itchy with vicarious discomfort for much of the film, but the humor kept it palatable and in some moments revelatory, even if the revelation is one I’ve had before: that being a human among humans is fraught with pitfalls.
The Portland Art Museum is hosting a series of movies in a dusty gravel lot south of OMSI, projected on a big inflatable screen, and this year I couldn’t resist the John Woo 1997 classic Face/Off. I’m a big fan of John Woo’s Hong Kong action thrillers. (If you like action, I strongly recommend Hardboiled, The Killer, and A Better Tomorrow, all starring charismatic Chow Yun-fat. Believe it or not, they’re all more amazing than Face/Off.) Woo’s films are over the top, the characters are preposterous and extreme, and the blow-out finales are bigger, crazier, and more imaginative than almost anyone else’s in his field. I saw Face/Off in the theater at age 12, and I never forgot the hilarity of the central premise, although I remembered nothing else. Without giving anything away, the movie is sci-fi-ish, but the sci-fi element exists only as a gimmick to setup a marvelous central device, which is that both John Travolta and Nicolas Cage must pretend to be Nicolas Cage. In other words, this is a spectacle of over-acting, bravado, cliches embraced, and lack of restraint. It’s so goofy.
The Tilikum and Marquam Bridges framed each side of the inflatable screen, the Willamette River flowed behind it, and the sun set and moon rose as we all screamed at the movie and laughed at the obnoxious shows of false affection and outrageous performances. I got that feeling I only get watching a movie when the audience is totally game: that being a human among humans can also expand me beyond myself and ratchet up my delight.
What fun the face Off venue in general! Leave it to Portland. I must track this guy down. :):)xo