Every other Sunday, Kam and I will take one older movie and talk about what it meant in its time and what it might mean today. Older in this context might mean anything made between 1895 (the Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat? Two thumbs up!) and, say, the last year of the 20th century (does David Cronenberg’s Existenz hold up as a vision of the future of virtual reality?). The idea is not to plod chronologically through film history but to treat it as a mysterious storage chest with endless drawers to open, so we’ll skip from era to era and genre to genre, following our instincts and curiosity as well as whatever parallels we find in the movies and headlines of the present day.
Slate’s has a great essay by Keith Phipps comparing “The Meg” to the nutty “Jaws: The Revenge,” asking “Which is the crazier shark movie?” It is wonderfully passionate, thoughtful, and thorough and tons of fun to read.
Everything about Jaws: The Revenge, from its borderline incoherent story to its chaotic action to its iffy effects to co-star Mario Van Peebles’ attempt at a Bahamian accent reveal it as a patchwork movie with little holding it together.
And it gives me a chance to share my all-time favorite stand-up routine ever, from the late, much-missed Richard Jeni.
Slate’s own Dana Stevens points out that there was only one title on all four participants’ top ten lists for the year, Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight.” She says, “‘Moonlight’s’ commercial and critical success—the near-universal recognition of its hard-to-define specialness—was one of the cracks in the wall that allowed light (that liquid Miami moonlight) to shine into this sometimes pitch-dark year.” Mark Harris calls it “a beautifully accomplished work that takes seminar-room issues of race, class, sexuality, and identity and transforms them into something artistic, sexy, tragic, wrenching, human, and fully American.”
I am more interested in the discussions and debates about particular movies than in the effort to look for themes in the movies that were released or popular in any individual year or consider them as a reflection on our times. But I did like Brooks Barnes’ essay in the New York Times about how in the tumultuous year all of the top box office films were fantasies.
Slate’s Heather Schwedel notes that Rachel McAdams has now appeared in four movies where her job is to sweetly (well, one of them not so sweetly) stand by as the man in her life travels through time, while she herself is stuck like the rest of us, moving forward a minute at a time.
Maybe if McAdams herself could go back in time, she’d rethink her agreement to appear in “The Hot Chick.” But I side with Schwedel in hoping that somehow, some day, she will get to do some time travel herself.
PS The movies are “About Time,” “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” “Midnight in Paris,” and “Doctor Strange”
Interview: Aisha Harris on Slate’s Black Film Canon — The 50 Greatest Films Made By Black Directors
Posted on June 7, 2016 at 3:56 pm
Aisha Harris and Dan Kois got ideas from a range of filmmakers, critics, and historians to prepare Slate’s list of the “50 Greatest Films by Black Directors,” a response to the many “canonical” lists that overlook these films. In an interview, she talked about why it was important to research and publish this list, which they called “The Black Film Canon,” and what she learned. I asked why they limited the list to films by black directors. “The idea came from Dan Kois through the idea of #Oscarsowhite controversy and how big a deal that was earlier this year. And part of the running narrative about the reason why that there were hardly any black people nominated this year is because they often don’t get to tell their own stories. They haven’t made it to the point where they can direct a big budget film. And so we wanted to make sure that this was a list that focused specifically on black people being able to tell their own stories and the opportunities that they’ve had to do that. Obviously there are plenty of really great films not on the list that are about black characters; ‘Cabin in the Sky,’ ‘Stormy Weather,’ ‘The Wiz,’ but we were specifically interested in those who were able to get behind the camera and I think there is something really powerful to be said about black people being able to tell their own story. One of the movies is ‘Malcolm X.’ That was originally supposed to be directed by Norman Jewison who obviously directed some great films about race, including ‘In The Heat of the Night’ and ‘A Soldier’s Story,’ but we all know that movie would have been vastly different and maybe not as powerful as Spike Lee’s version of ‘Malcolm X.’ So I think there is something to be said for being able to tell your own story and that’s what we wanted to get across with this list.”
It was great to see titles on the list that some people might consider not serious or prestigious enough for “canon” status, reflecting the same broad range that has what was once dismissed as a genre film, “Vertigo,” on the top of the once-a-decade Sight and Sound ranking. “For us that was another goal. What we wanted with this list was to broaden the scope of what canon means. It doesn’t have to mean high art’ it doesn’t have to mean that every single piece of that film is perfect or that it has a big budget or it is a Hollywood studio film. We wanted to make sure that our list represented films that are culturally significant but maybe aren’t considered ‘great’ by the usual people who make these canons. A lot of people, including me, forget that ‘House Party’ premiered at Sundance in 1990 and that helped redefine what an indie film could look like. It was at the forefront. It was what indie films could look like in the 90s. We also wanted this also to be an accessible list. A lot of these movies are challenging and I am all for challenging films — we should all be challenged by films. But there is room on the list for films that don’t necessarily have to be so heavy. I think we should celebrate the movies that aren’t heavy as well as the ones that are.”
Some of the films reflect the internalized bigotry — and commercial pressures to reinforce stereotypes — of their era. “that is the sort of thing you always have to consider with older movies, especially when you’re talking about black films and black representation on films. I mean ‘The Blood of Jesus,’ the Spencer Williams film, if you are a modern viewer it’s not the easiest film to watch. The acting was theatrical and it has a very old-school mentality about the power of religion and this very antiquated notion of the sinner and redemption. But at the same time you can’t ignore the fact that it’s a very culturally significant film, it’s an historically significant film and it exists. Spencer Williams, if people know him at all, he’s known for being one half of Amos and Andy which obviously has been heavily criticized and does not hold up today by modern standards. So it is important to remember that he was also a filmmaker and a talented one at that at a time when there were barely any black filmmakers. I think is something that is worth looking at and he’s worth being acknowledged as a filmmaker and not just as this character who now is just shorthand for Uncle Tom.”
They also made a point of including black women directors like Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) and Ava Duvernay (“Middle of Nowhere” and “Selma”). “As polarizing as Spike Lee can be, I think most people acknowledge that he is a force to be reckoned with whether you are talking just about black films or a film in general but when it comes to women it is just a whole different ballgame. A lot of the women on the list have only one or two feature films under their belt and they have been in the game for 20, 30 years. Leslie Harris made ‘Just Another Girl on the IRT,’ and I think that remains to this day her only feature film. And Kasi Lemmons has not made that many movies, Gina Prince-Bythewood did ‘Love and Basketball,’ and then she did ‘Beyond The Lights‘ 14 years later, so they aren’t getting the same opportunities. I mean it’s hard for black males it’s even harder for black women and Ava Duvernay is hopefully turning the tide on that and she’s obviously very vocal and very active about promoting other women and other women of color in filmmaking and I think it’s great that we have someone like her that’s hopefully leading the charge along with the sudden attention to Hollywood being so white and so male.”
Harris was not familiar with all of the films on the list and hopes it will bring them to a wider audience as well. “I just think it gets at the emotional core of slavery and also the politics that happens within slavery that I think a lot of films do not do.
Another movie that I was unfamiliar with was ‘Medicine for Melancholy.’ That’s the 2008 film by Barry Jenkins and it stars Wyatt Cenac and it’s this very beautiful black and white film. I think some people made the comparison to ‘Before Sunrise.’ It takes place in one day. Two people have a one night stand but there is also so much more going on, there are some questions about gentrification and about romance and I was really happy to see that movie and discover it. That’s one of the things I appreciated about the list and I am glad that we did was that we did not just rely on myself and Dan. We didn’t want this to be just a list. We wanted to get as many perspectives as possible and as many informed perspectives as possible and that opened up a whole other realm and I think that made the list all the better to have those suggestions thrown after us.”
