Use Your Illusion

The Last Movie (1971) - Hopper After the success of Easy Rider (1969), a movie which defined the counterculture/hippie generation, the Universal Pictures gave Dennis Hopper a carte blanche to make a new movie, fully expecting another hit with the youth audience. But what they got was jumbled, incomprehensible mess, a movie only a heavily drugged, highly egotistical Hollywood actor could dream of. The Last Movie has all the hallmarks of an ambitious and masculin epic possible-only-in-the-70s' feel to it - the exotic locations (shot in the high mountains of Peru), large sprawling cast including thousands of local extras, grand theme (film aping real life aping film) and recalls more successful, better articulated films of its day- Aguirre: the Wrath of God, El Topo, Heaven's Gate, The Days of the Locusts, etc.

The film 'loosely' tells the story of a Hollywood Stuntman Kansas (Hopper) doing stunt work on the set of a Hollywood western production, directed by Sam Fuller, up in the Andes. After the production ends and everyone goes back home, Kansas remains and shacks up with a local girl, Maria (Stella Garcia) and dreaming of having a good life - a house on the hills, with a swimming pool perhaps. His real motivations to stay is never clear.

In the meantime, there is a cult-like local group, unhealthily influenced by the presence of a Hollywood production, starts reenacting a movie production of their own, with cameras, lights and boom made out of sticks and firecrackers, and using real violence because they don't understand that the filmmaking process is fakery. The local priest (Thomas Milian) is not too pleased about it. It's a devil's doing, he says.

Kansas with his friend Neville (Don Gordon) try to suck up to Anderson, a rich, sleazy business owner and his bored lusty wife, for their expedition to find gold, and gets tangled up in sexual escapades, much to the distress of Maria.

As Kansas gets swepted up in the locals' 'movie production', he really gets hurt and is bedridden. But is it his drug filled imagination or is it real? With the non-linear narrative and no definite ending, it is up to the audience to decide.

Studded with appearance by Hopper's friends - Peter Fonda, Fuller, Kris Kristopherson, Toni Basil and the like, and heady with the metaphors for filmmaking, the US cultural colonialism and jump cuts and "scene missing" title cards, The Last Movie is full of grand ideas and stunning scenery (shot by László Kovács) but doesn't come together coherently. Panned by the critics, and its failure at the box office pushed out Hopper to an exile from Hollywood for a dacade after this film.

Floating

El auge del humano 3/The Human Surge (2023) - Williams Seven years have passed since Argentine experimental filmmaker, Eduardo Williams's Human Surge made a splash in the international film scene. The elusive threads of young people's lives in the global south, shot in various media that incorporate video games and internet, challenged and refuted the rigid old notion of cinema and its first world colonialist hegemony without being seen as overtly political or preachy. Globalization, in Williams's presentation, at least for young people, is both fantasy and real, and among them, connection is easily made crossing national boundaries over abundant technology and is no big deal, in their impoverished daily lives.

Williams comes up with The Human Surge 3. Never mind its title. It's been a while, things have been happening in the world. It's appropriate that he jumps to the third one to keep up with the times. (The prolific filmmaker has been constantly making shorts) In Surge 3, using a 360 VR camera, he charts the non-binary young people's lives in Peru, Taiwan and Sri Lanka. As always, their daily lives in exotic surroundings and daily conversations can be a little discombobulating to the viewers at first. But as it plays out and we settle with some recognizable faces over time, we get settled in and notice that their thoughts intermingle. Certain conversations are repeated in different languages: their animosity toward millionaires, polution and environmental destruction. Then they appear in each other's surroundings and communicate with each other, either in English or in their own language without missing a beat. Someone mentions, "I saw you in my dream, eating a mango on a raft in the water," matching with the image in the Peru section.

In Williams's hand, globalization in the internet age opens up limitless possibilities for the young people to connect - they literally float in the air. For the viewers, he presents an immersive visual/aural journey while also reminding the limitations of technology (for now) by leaving in the distortions of wide angle VR camera imagery in the film.

There are some great established filmmakers who take great chances with experimenting with narratives and the medium to further their artistry in telling human experiences within historical and cultural contexts: Lisandro Alonso and Miguel Gomes- Harmony Korine to a lesser extent, come to mind. Eduardo Williams, with his minimalist/maximalist free-flowing aesthetics, with acute observations of the world here and now, with a great deal of sense of humor and compassion & tenderness toward its subjects, emerges as one of the most daring, important filmmakers working today.

Spoilt Milk

La Teta Asustada/The Milk of Sorrow (2009) - Llosa




Sullen Fausta (luminous Magaly Solier) has the 'milk of sorrow' illness: offsprings of the rape victims during the civil war are said to be borne without souls. So afraid of being violated, she had shoved up a potato in her vagina. After her mother dies, she needs to come up with the money for the funeral (she lives in a shanty town on the hillside of Lima) and to take the body to her old village. She starts working as a maid for a rich pianist who wants her to sing with the promise of pearls.

It's really hard not to compare this to Claudia Llosa's previous effort, Madeinusa. Even though it's far better than most of the films I've seen this year, The Milk of Sorrow was underwhelming. Although it's beautifully photographed, it's not literal enough in that South American literary magical realism way. It boils down to a young girl getting over her fear of the world and finding wisdom in gardening- which isn't too interesting of a subject. For some reason, the 14 yr old heroine in Madeinusa seemed a lot more mature and interesting than Fausta in Sorrow. But don't get me wrong, Solier, with her trembling girlish voice and time-transcending face, is something of an enigma still. This will definitely end up on my top ten list of the year.

Llosa's Madeinusa review

Altitude Sickness

Altiplano (2009) - Brosens/Woodworth

Altiplano opens with the start of the Virgin Mary procession in the town of Turubamba up in the Andes. The statue shatters right outside the church because children get over-excited about silvery liquid in the potholes on the ground. The whole sequence is breathtakingly gorgeous. Then it cuts to a battle field of Iraq, where a Iranian-born, Belgian photojournalist Grace (Jasmin Tabatabai) is forced to take a picture of the death of her guide, Omar. Soon after, she denounces her profession and falls into a deep depression racked with guilt while her husband, a cataract surgeon Max (Dardennes' regular Olivier Gormet) heads for the Andes for the volunteer work.

People in Turubamba get sick from the mercury poisoning and a headstrong girl Saturnina (Magali Solier of Madeinusa) loses her fiancé to the illness. Her blind rage becomes the focal point for the riots against ever present mining companies digging for gold.

Set in otherworldly Andes backdrop, Altiplano is bravura filmmaking at its best- colors, music, camera movements and unforgettable images mixed in with myth and spirituality conjuring up emotions like no other. The filmmakers does take artistic freedom to bring home the message. But it doesn't feel cheap. Their tragic lyricism doesn't feel made-up. And the camera adores Solier, understandably so- she is the definition of exotic beauty. Her defiant martyr carries this otherwise too on-the-nose film. By the end, this stunningly presented tale of reconciliation and fraternity really cuts deep.

Trailer