Glitch Stitching

 

MR. & MRS. SMITH (Cover)

 

   I love cover songs but only when they do their own thing; if I wanted to hear the original, I'd listen to the original. A cover is a great opportunity for new textures and, when a great cover comes along, it's reinvigorating (not to mention if you love both, that means you now have two of the same song to pick from based on your mood - it's such a treat).

  That said, anytime I hear some actor/writer/director say they're involved in a remake of a movie or show because they're "a big fan of the original," my immediate response is "...then why remake it?" Music is different, there's definitely something to be said about wanting to do a cover of a song because you love it so much, but movies aren't necessarily remade out of love - it's more cynically capitalist or there's a need to do it better (unless it's A Christmas Carol or A Star Is Born which seem fated to be remade until the end of time). I can think of plenty of fumbled movies that absolutely need remakes because, as they exist, they're monuments of wasted potential (Lisa Frankenstein is the most unfortunately recent example) but there are some that I have no strong opinions on either way.

  Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a movie I've never felt much for so it was a huge relief to read that Donald Glover was not only remaking it, but he watched it and wasn't a fan, and more importantly: he was honest about that. He admitted that he saw room for improvement and then, with Francesca Sloane, worked to make one hell of a cover album that I can't get out of my head. I repeat quotes like humming a melody and mull over its themes like unpacking lyricism. It's even structured in a satisfying way.

  There's virtually no plot that isn't eclipsed by character-driven momentum and all the juicy dialog typically chewed on these narrative roadtrips. The details of their spy missions (and sometimes even the action) are incidental unless they affect our burgeoning couple's dynamic. Every episode is about the different stages of dating (episode 5 is all about raising a child which is one of the funniest things I've ever seen [imagine Baby's Day Out but Ron Perlman plays the baby]) and by the time the finale rolls around you'd swear you've known this couple for more than just one season.

   Glover and Maya Erskine are so good that it took me 6 episodes to realize just how good they were. And I don't mean that they were unimpressive until Episode 6, no, I mean that they're so good that they flew under my radar. Their chemistry is so natural and potent that watching them feels like eavesdropping in a way; sexy, off-color, and perceptive. They're hot international spies but goddamn if they're not also lame and dumb at times.

  Most romcoms tend to write the most snarky, witty, cutesy dialog for the illusion of making our characters likable and charismatic, but not here. The dialog between these two is consistently funny, sure, but it's so uncommonly naked in how ordinary it sounds and it's delivered with such understated sharpness that it makes them more than simply 'likable,' but, rather, relatable and charming without feeling forced or desperate. Their conversations are moreso the kinds that couples have on their way home from seeing a romcom.

  They manage to capture the authenticity of a relationship and all of its intricate intimacies and the conversations knotted up therein - including a lovely little set-up/payoff about having to fart in the middle of the night. It's not a 'fart joke' in a crude juvenile sense, it's just... something we all deal with as couples and so unexpectedly cute without rotting your teeth. It's as much about what we say to each other but also about what ISN'T said (or is subtly implied) that makes these two interesting - which is more important than any romcom likability, and that plays into the show's theme of omission. The finale is the closest the show gets to the original movie but it goes far beyond the one-liner quips and bullet-spraying. We're thrust into a marathon of a first act and then brought down by an unexpectedly earnest, woozy, sexy, and sad final act that brings it all to a bold close that, if there's no other season planned...is quite a masterstroke for Glover and Sloane.

   Admittedly, this has been a slow year for both movies and TV (Fargo s5 and The Curse don't count because they bled over from 2023) so this sets a high bar for the rest of 2024, or until Glover does something else. I wonder what other movies he might want to improve.

Berlin Alexanderplatz

"We take for granted that filmmakers are, if they so wish, in the game of recycling. Adapting novels is one of the most venerable types of movie projects, although a book that calls itself a novelization seems-rightly-barbarous. Being a hybrid art as well as a late one, film has always been in a dialogue with other narrative genres.(...)

In Berlin Alexanderplatz, cinema has at last achieved some of the accumulative power of the novel by being as long as it is- and by being theatrical."

                                                                      -Susan Sontag, Novel Into Film, Vanity Fair 1983

Susan Sontag said in the same article the film is best experienced broken up into four days. The Gene Siskel Film Center decided to one up the advice and present it in two days. A novel broken up into 13 chapters and an Epilogue, the theater broken it down as such:

SATURDAY

Pts I-II

(20 minute break)

Pts III-V

(20 minute break)

Pts VI-VII

SUNDAY

Pts. VIII- IX

(10 minute break)

Pts. X- XI

(20 minute break)

Pts. XII-XIII

(10 minute break)

Epilogue

The cumulative effect of having watched such a long work is to have the parts play off each other. The themes are more present and in tune. 

Since the age of 14, Rainer Werner Fassbinder has been obssessed with Alfred Doblin's 1922 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. Alfred Doblin's novel is about Franz Biberkopf, a man who has just been released from prison for the murder of a woman. The narrative concerns itself with the fight for Franz's soul and his quest to live as honestly as he can. So it is fitting the first part of Fassbinder's opus is titled The Punishment Begins. His struggle doesn't so much happen to him in prison, but once he is released.

When RWF was finally ready to tackle the adaptation, he had already made 34 films. He was only 35. The prolific nature of Fassbinder brings to mind the studio system of the 30s and 40s. But even then you don't have the consistency in quality Fassbinder was pumping out. The only director I can think of who has been more prolific is Jess Franco. And still, the ratio of quality films to mediocre films is not that good. 

Fassbinder regulars Hanna Schygulla, Gottfried John and Brigitte Mira plays prominent parts. On an aesthetic level, he chooses to shoot in 16mm with Xaver Schwarzenberger behind the camera. Someone whom he worked with for the first time. 

Ian Penman describes Fassbinder as having been a part of the center of a 5 circle venn diagram. One is political: left-wing post-1968 gay liberation. Two: Hollywood and popular TV/film, taking in noir and melodrama with special reference to Sirk. Three: European film including Godard, Bresson, Melville, Bunuel, Chabrol. Four: radical theatre with special reference to Brecht. Five: European culture, including Genet, Doblin, Artaud and Van Gogh. 

Unlike his peers of the New German movement, Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders, he has become difficult to smooth down. Too untidy and paradoxical. Over four decades after his passing in 1982 at the age of 37, his messiness remains. 

The 15 hour magnum opus can be considered a summation of his filmography as much as it be of the themes he regularly displays. The intersection of sex and sexuality, masculinity and misogny, money and labor, politics and ideology. 

In an interview with the director in 1980, he was asked if he sees similarities from Alexanderplatz to the present days. His response: "I am certain that an exact description of the Weimar Republic, which Alexanderplatz is, has something to do with our republic. I believe it is becoming more right wing just as the Weimar Republic had. So I think there are parallels. Individual points can be refuted, but I think this is a general tendency in politics. I will continue to try to at least make the audience aware of this right-wing trend so that they don't just stupidly and unconsciously go along with it like in the past."