Another double feature! I was trying to reach the mark of 100 movies at the theater this years, but it was not possible... On the 31, I choose a nap over cross the city to watch the only available screening on New years Eve. We'll have to conform to 99. Sorry, OCD.
Margherita is a movie director, a character in Mia Madre. At many moments, people around her question her preference for shooting the kind of stories she does. Her answer? She likes to film real people and their true struggles.
The same can be said about Nanni Moretti, whose most fanciful movie may be Habemus Papam (and even so it is very palpable). I first met the Italian filmmaker in Dear Diary, one of my favorites movies in life.
It is incredible what Moretti does here. The so called voyeuristic aspect of a viewer is more clear here, because we feel like invading Margherita's daily life and troubles. She is so lost, but her aloofness doesn't allow us to get closes and give her a hug. But I stayed by her side, bit by bit of her story, thinking that it is not easy to be in her place - a constant fear of mine and something that I pray will take a long time to happen to me.
An afterthought: there was in here a slightly incongruent part when the focus on the narrative fell over Margherita's brother, Moretti. Maybe it was a bad editing, but it didn't make sense at all.
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| Mia Madre. Directed by Nanni Moretti. With: Margherita Buy, John Turturro, Nanni Moretti. Writers: Nanni Moretti et al. Italy/France, 2015, 106 min., Color (Cinema). |
At night, the movie was Psycho, in a special screening at the movies this wednesday. Roddrigo accepted to acompany me, even after the scary fiasco in The Shining (I'm still laughing). And there we were, in a not so crowded auditorium, to see Hitchcock's masterpiece.
The odd thing is that I first thought I had a perfect recollection of this movie, but that wasn't entirely true. I've forgotten about how daring the first scene is - I loved it, so honest, bold for the time (even if at the '60s the USA movies were presenting more intense plots and scenes). Ooh, Sam Loomis <3 (I have to vent here - I had to be more discreet at the theater, but I'm not sure I succeeded :). Rodrigo helped me disguise my girly sighs of admiration with the very old debate between us about sexism (Jaisus) - one more excuse to laugh at ourselves in fact. At the end, I realized that I only remembered the two main scenes, what is very unfortunate, actually. It was a good choice to re-watch Pycho then.
This movie is so tense, suspenseful, I'm not sure if there one nail left on my fingers. What is Anthony Perkins in this movie? The careful details (another debate here, for sure, because what is a careful production for me, for Rodrigo is the old habit of explaining too much in Hollywood productions). The last scene, with a lot of explanation (and another extensive talk about it - I don't know how people didn't expel us from the theater), is a curious thing - this kind of solution was not so usual at that time, I think. I only imagine how Hitchcock would ended it today.
At the moments I was not biting my nails furiously, the movie Hitchcock (2012) came to my mind. The part in which the filmmaker is mimicking the shower scene is so sweet, telling a lot about a filmaker's work, it never fails to bring a smile to my face. On imdb.com trivia there's a curiosity about how Janet Leigh could never take a shower in her life again, opting only for baths. I don't know if it is true, but that scene is remarkably scary and intense, besides an exemplary cinematography - and that's only for the viewer, I can only guess what it is to perform it.
Another thought: now I can finally reach Bate's Motel, the TV show. I was right to wait for the time when I could see Psycho again. One of the most amazing things about movie is how they change in us with time - even a film considered "a genre difining" as Psycho. I usually notice how sharp the dialogues are in these so called classics. Some of its more ironic features passed unnoticed by my younger naive mind. Screening like that is a nice oportunity to reinvent these movies in me with the perk of an outstanding movie in a big screen, the place they truly belong to.
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| Psycho. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. With: Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles. Writers: Joseph Stefano from the novel by Robert Bloch. USA, 1960, 109 min., Mono, Black and White (Cinema). |
PS: No Dash and Lily's quotations today. I'll save you from it after this rather long post. But I'm still with them, of course, and still fighting the urge to read forward :)
PPS: If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go to the post scriptum on Day 287 :)
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