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James Gray maintains that much of the cinema he admires feeds on all the myths that identify us as part of the same tribe. To all. 2001: a space odyssey , for example, is Homeric by the same title, by the archer (Bowman) who stars in it, by the too human cyber cyclops who kidnaps the crew and even by the capricious theological game that orders it. And like her, all the others. What if cinema, in general, had already been able to create its own mythology for the new world that saw it born?
Then, all movies would talk about other movies to refute, reorganize or simply relive them. Then, cinema would only feed on cinema. What if Ad astra , of precisely James Gray, was an innocent, virgin and even contradictory pure recovery of the prodigy signed by Kubrick? What if Marriage story , by Noah Baumbach , were a raw reread of Marriage Secrets , by Ingmar Bergman , or (outside the world) of Kramer vs. Kramer , by Robert Benton ? It is cinema, in effect, that devours cinema.
The previous paragraph could be an approximate definition for an exceptional day. It had been a long time since the same festival on the same day dared not so much. And so bright. The two star films of the day were presented, each in its own way, ready to reconstruct the obsessions and ambitions that have presided over the filmography of each of the directors. And in both cases, what matters above all is the ability of the same cinema to expand and reconstruct the look itself . And from his hand, the world.
Space adventure
James Gray, in order of expectation, was the first to appear. Escorted by a Brad Pitt who acts as protagonist, astronaut and producer, the director proposes in Ad astra a rigorous space adventure. No more With all that that means for a viewer who has matched his gaze to space with the very texture of fantastic cinema. The film tells the journey of a man to a distant station in Saturn where long ago the trail of an expedition was lost. The task of those was to find an extraterrestrial intelligence and the order of the now sent is to save the planet (as is) while meeting his father, since he was the man in command.
The director designs a clear line strategy, so to speak. Far from the metaphysical labyrinths, the temporal loops and the agony of the emptiness that always accompanies the genre, the idea is to reconstruct a realistic, dirty, slightly apocalyptic and very human space in which the imagination acquires the virtue of the tactile, the possible, The disturbing by close. The film advances in a straight line in an attempt never forced to recover the transparent innocence of space, of risk, of adventure, as cinema has told us, in fact; that interior cinema that configures the retina of any of us.
Again, as is the rule in the director's filmography, a not-so-invisible thread unites that effort for the virgin essence of the imagination with the very nature of madness and this with the need for paternal encounter-disagreement. As in The Lost City of Z , the most obvious and closest reference, the journey to the farthest end of humanity ends up being a journey towards the deepest. And as in the adventure of the explorer who seeks a forgotten kingdom in the middle of the jungle, the whole trip is marked by the need for discovery, mystery. Ad astra is first and foremost a beautiful, magnetic film in each of its planes as contemplative as they are vibrant . Ad astra is a film that converts the necessary game of recognition into an almost sacred space for wonder. Cinema that devours cinema.
SECRETS AND MARRIAGES
Marriage story , the film by Noah Baumbach with Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver inside, nothing seems to have to do with his day companion and, nevertheless, the two condemns their clarity. In this case, and perhaps because of the modesty of the materials that inform it (there are no spaceships), the proposal reaches the character of a miracle. Again the director just tells what happens when things break . Thus it has been somewhat more than persistent since A history of Brooklyn (2005). And yet, never before has he been more lucid, more fun, more cruel and more transparent.
The film describes, tells and traverses (each verb at the time) the hazards of a separation. And it does so with all the consequences; as pending of the melodrama as of the ridiculous; as attentive to the seriousness of each gesture as aware of the arbitrary nature of each wound. The camera literally sticks to the faces of the two actors, and she and, above all, he is displayed wide in a display of blood.
Baumbach is always aware of the cinema on which he stands. As in Bergman, nothing is hidden. Even the disease, if necessary. And against Kramer against Kramer (also this account, even if it is negative), everything runs with a strange normality that ends up being cruel . And delusional too. When at any given time, the movie breaks to let the Driver character sing an entire song, everything will make sense. It was about that: of letting each action acquire its weight both in the center of the plane and outside, far away, from it. Baumbach has just revealed his particular and inalienable concept of what a masterpiece is.
It was Borges , always he, who said that of all the inventions of man, the book is the most unique of all. While the others (the microscope, the plow or the sword) are extensions of his body, the book is of his memory and imagination. Well, both Baumbach and Gray are convinced that the cinema is from the eyes (with all the myths that inform it) that they look surprised at the universe. Be it to the stars or to the deepest part of the bowels.
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