Lost in Criterion

Given the rate of Bergman releases in the Criterion Collection it surprised us to realize that we haven't seen a film from the man in nearly two years. And what a surprising Bergman to come back to. Persona (1966) seems to be Bergman recognizing his place in the world cinema while also having or recovering from another breakdown. It starts with like 10 minutes of experimental film, and the thesis for this experiment is "Oh you want another Bergman film?" And the weirdness continues through the rest of the movie.

Spine 700, can you believe it? We've been doing this for a long time.

Criterion rewards our dedication with an overly full release of Wes Anderson's adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). Mark Gustafson is animation director of this animated movie, but this is less a Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas situation than a Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, the former of which is a Henry Selick movie that gets mistakenly attributed to the producer and the later of which Gustafson actually has credited co-director status on because Del Toro respects artists. Gustafson and the animation team bring Wes Anderson's vision to life to create one of the most Wes Anderson-y movies Wes Anderson has ever made.

Every documentary the Criterion Collection shows us leads to a discussion on what documentaries are, what they can do, and what their relationship to truth can and should be. Inevitably as well the supplements to a Criterion Collection release of a documentary provide context that can reshape how we view the original piece's relationship to truth. Errol Morris's A Brief History of Time (1991) is no different. In part a presentation on the ideas featured in Stephen Hawking's book of the same name and a biography of Hawking himself, the film distorts reality like an event horizon. In the supplemental material Morris states that one shouldn't judge a documentary on whether it presents the truth, but if it attempts to find the truth and whether it makes the viewer think about what the text's relationship to the truth is. The movie itself may not provide enough information to do that.

Stephen Soderberg's third movie is the marquee release this week, King of the Hill (1993), an adaptation of A.E. Hotchner's memoir of being poor in Depression-era St. Louis. Also slid in here is Soderberg's fourth movie, The Underneath (1995), a remake of the Robert Siodmak's 1949 noir Criss Cross. Accompanying each is an introduction from Soderberg about how much he loathes the films, which makes it hard to like them ourselves -- though The Underneath is certainly the worse film. Ultimately we spend a lot of time wondering why Criterion bothered to put these out, particularly together, and I think came to a satisfying if bleak answer.

Oh boy, another Roman Polanski film.

Tess (1979) is Polanski's adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 1890's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The film is well acted and well shot and we'd love to just talk about that but all the bonus material is about how Polanski was a brave genius making his first movie after an unfortunate incident in which he did something that was really quite normal at the time and he got blacklisted from Hollywood. Tess won three of the six Oscars it was nominated for, and we get to spend so much time talking about this movie in the context Criterion has provided.

So content warning.