Lost in Criterion

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.

Alfred Hitchcock's pre-war spy thrillers are interesting because on the one hand they're romps and on the other hand they're designed to subtly push the British public against Germany in a time when the film cannot openly call the bad guys German. This tonal dialectic really worked for us in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934, Spine 643) and The Lady Vanishes (1938, Spine 3), but falls a little flatter in The 39 Steps (1935, Spine 56) and Foreign Correspondent (1940). Here the unevenness is more noticeable, and that's because bubbling just below the surface is a fight between Hitchcock's desire to make a normal Hitchcock movie and producer Walter Wanger's desire to make an up-to-the-minute ripped-from-the-headline-writers' view of the impending war, unhelped by the army of writers working on it throughout production. But also very much helped by the visual effects and production design.

Abdellatif Kechiche's adaptation of Jul Maroh's Blue is the Warmest Color (2013) offers us a lot to talk about, but Criterion's release offers no additional content to frame our conversation, which is extra weird considering the hundreds of thousands of words written on this film upon its release. We're just two cishet guys talking about a lesbian relationship, but maybe that's ok because it doesn't seem like there were any lesbians involved in the lesbian romance movie anyway. But beyond the male gaze-y sex scenes there is a deeply interesting story of a relationship, of a young working class woman coming into her own, and of a student becoming a teacher becoming a burned out teacher.