More on: film

Portraits of the Sonata: Desire and Transformation in Modern European Cinema   IN 1984, A MIDDLE-AGED MAN wearing headphones, sequestered away in the attic of an East German apartment building, sits before a typewriter. Around him are the trappings of his profession, the machines and gear that allow him to spy upon events transpiring in…

Departures: Journeys with Asian Filmmakers   I’M HALFWAY OVER the Atlantic on a 777, and I’ve just unfolded myself from my seat. It feels like needles are threading blood back down through my legs and feet. Teaching myself to walk again, I grimace up the aisle of the darkened plane. As I go, I scan…

I want a hero: an uncommon want, When every year and month sends forth a new one, Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant, The age discovers he is not the true one ——————Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto the First A SUPERHERO MOVIE is foremost an entertainment, often kitschy, sometimes trashy, but regardless, it is…

THE YEAR 1992 marked the release of a film that challenged all conventional notions of filmmaking—and that nevertheless received nearly universal critical acclaim, much to the surprise of its makers. That film was Baraka. Filmed at 152 locations in twenty-four countries on six continents with no narrative or dialogue, Baraka was described as “a guided…

IT STARTED with a phone call. “Sweet D, I’m coming to California. I want to interview you for my new book.” Nobody ever called me “Sweet” except my Davidson College roommate, John Marks. Evidently he was on the prowl, in search of his next story. I was intrigued. “Why me?” I asked him. “Because you…

A HALF CENTURY AGO I was standing in a skid row bar wondering what role I was playing. The bar was called, almost mockingly, the Ritz, and we were making a film, but the role I pondered wasn’t an acting part, and it was more than a question of what function I had at the moment.…

THEY WILL ALL LEAVE, first my brother-in-law, who is frank about his tastes, and then the others, borne away on several tides of pretext—the bathroom, pots on the stove, the freshening of drinks—from which none return. Now it’s just me watching, lying belly down on the bed where I used to sleep with my wife.…

IN MAY 2001 I found myself at the Cannes Film Festival on a six-member ecumenical jury. Every year the festival hosts other accredited juries besides the star-studded official one, and since 1974 an ecumenical jury made up of Catholics and Protestants has given awards to films in Cannes’s competitive selection. Dutifully we attended all the…

A House Divided: Broken Homes, Flying Houses, Divorce, and Death in Family Fantasy Films   THERE’S NO PLACE like home.” It’s been over seven decades since Dorothy Gale murmured those reassuring words, ruby-slippered heels clicking beneath her. “Home” evokes associations of safety and security, whether in baseball, hide-and-seek, or board games like Sorry—but even in…

Image: In your essay in the new issue of Image, “Power in the Blood: Hollywood and the Myth of Religious Violence,” you write about the strange relationship Hollywood has to Christianity—mainstream Hollywood movies tend to use violent Christians, often broadly stereotypical ones, as villains. They also tend to tell stories where further violence is used to…