SCFZ poll: Dominik Graf

[rischka]

ok i'm watching die katze. 80s action!! it's fun xD

[Holymanm]

all these directors' polls go so fast! i am dizzy.

just to explain why things work this way (since i don't think you were around when we started these polls up), they were set up this way on purpose, really -- the original idea was that people probably wouldn't watch films specifically for the directors polls most of the time. they'd just be a fun little exercise that might inspire a bit of conversation about specific directors sometimes. when we started them, we had other major polls running (and we still do, not quite as many of them though) like the year polls and genre polls, and those are left open a lot longer because people often watch a lot of films for them. i didn't want these mini-polls to detract from those bigger polls.

of course when someone does want to explore a director we're polling, i'm happy to leave the poll open. i probably wouldn't want to leave it open more than a week past the original deadline though.

I'm still dreaming about the second run-through of these polls at some point... (after we run out of viable directors, anyway)

[nrh]

probably need to watch it a second time (and will try to write about it at more length on the graf director's thread) but tatort: auf der tiefe der zeit is quite something, maybe the most abrasive and discordant graf i've seen yet. i sort of get why some people don't think it comes together but that final discordant crashing together of elements in the last third is i think part of what gives it it's uneasy power...

[charulata]

Dreileben: Don't follow me around
Die katz
im angesicht des verbrechens
Smoke on the water
Frau bu lacht

[niminy-piminy]

finally started with DG (BELOVED SISTERS specifically).
considering my eyes are rather exhausted after the JIDFF marathon, considering the director's cut lasts 170 minutes and considering i am somewhat stuck contemplating the two following (at first glance) contradictory statements...

the film is happily forgetting to structure a more consistent and less nonchalant narration - as opposed to "Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent" by Truffaut, clearly the model of this film.

Like Francois Truffaut's Jules and Jim, Dominik Graf's film Beloved Sisters tells a story of a decades-long love triangle over a backdrop of European turmoil.

... i expect to watch this single film for several days (being constantly interrupted by the urge to digress to some additional reading about Graf, Truffaut, and all kinds of German trivia from around 1800).
i watched both Truffaut's films in question relatively recently so i am really curious how this cinematic threesome ("Beloved Sisters", "Jules and Jim" and "Two English Girls") relates or unrelates. if anyone has any links or thoughts about this triangle (if the model for BelSis was Jul&Jim or 2EngGrl or both or none) i will gladly read (and will thus even prolong my viewing)...

[thoxans]

ngl really wanna see a flick by this dude! an interesting (mis)preconception always happens seeing stills and reading other viewers' thoughts

very curious if my secondhand extrapolation > supposition of screenshots/commentary in any way jives with what graf is actually doing

it's like that one time i said lemora was pretty aight, and pabs proceeded to give it like a 2.5/10...

[nrh]

i watched both Truffaut's films in question relatively recently so i am really curious how this cinematic threesome ("Beloved Sisters", "Jules and Jim" and "Two English Girls") relates or unrelates. if anyone has any links or thoughts about this triangle (if the model for BelSis was Jul&Jim or 2EngGrl or both or none) i will gladly read (and will thus even prolong my viewing)...

haven't found three hours to fit in the beloved sisters directors cut yet but from olaf moller's review -

"The key points of reference are Truffaut’s Two English Girls, Rohmer’s German-language The Marquise of O, and Wajda’s The Maids of Wilko as well as less well-known films such as Klaus Kirschner’s 1976 Mozart: Recordings of a Youth and Michael Hild’s 1978 Tagebuch des Verführers, both of which informed Graf’s approach to period detail and the era’s fundamentally different sense of time and space."

and graf has mentioned before that seeing two english girls "opened a new cosmos of cinema" for him when he was a teenager.

[niminy-piminy]

"The key points of reference are Truffaut’s Two English Girls, Rohmer’s German-language The Marquise of O, and Wajda’s The Maids of Wilko as well as less well-known films such as Klaus Kirschner’s 1976 Mozart: Recordings of a Youth and Michael Hild’s 1978 Tagebuch des Verführers, both of which informed Graf’s approach to period detail and the era’s fundamentally different sense of time and space."

so, "Jules&Jim" seems really not a direct point of reference to "BelSis".
different constellation (one lady vs. two close friends, not even brothers) and not a Germany-around-1800 period piece.

points of reference:
1/ constellation relevance (hero vs. two sisters), not period relevance: "Two English Girls", "The Maids of Wilko".
2/ period relevance (Germany around 1800), not constellation relevance: "The Marquise of O", "Mozart: A Childhood Chronicle", "Tagebuch des Verführers"

besides both Truffaut's films, i watched also "The Marquise of O" and i see a somewhat similar vibe.
a similar Germany-around-1800 upper-class living eccentricity.
in "The Marquise of O" there is a virtuous widow's "mysterious" pregnancy and in "BelSis" escaping an unsatisfactory marriage by faking death (told in a letter)...

[flip]

i'll leave this open until friday, if that's cool with everyone?

[niminy-piminy]

i'll leave this open until friday, if that's cool with everyone?

i will watch 1 or 2 more films by him till Friday, so i am fine.
and btw. year poll lasts for the whole month (1997 poll will be closed at the end of November?), right?

[niminy-piminy]

omg, in "BelSis" there is even expressed Friedrich Schiller's opinion on typography (Didot script specifically) and he eulogizes the prospects of polygraphic industry. regardless of whatever number of other films by DG i could watch, i can't imagine putting at the forefront another film by him...



and my enthusiasm for "BelSis" can't decrease even the fact that crystal clear typefaces of the Enlightenment era (like Didot) are no longer considered as most enhancing as far as remembering the written text is concerned. "Easier to read" proved to be counterproductive (easy to read = easily forgotten)...

Researchers Invent a New Font That Is Scientifically Proven to Help You Retain What You Read

Study of 400 students finds "Sans Forgetica" increases memory.

Researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne have invented a new font named "Sans Forgetica" that has been demonstrated to increase retention.

Do you sometimes have a hard time remembering something you've read even a day or two after you've read it? Or worse, do you find yourself reading the same article twice, because you didn't remember that you'd read it before? Scientists at RMIT University believe their new font may fix that problem, enabling you to remember what you read.

Sans Forgetica is decidedly odd looking. It slants backward and there are gaps in all of the letters. How does this aid retention? Because it creates a "simple puzzle," for readers, according to Stephen Banham, a typography lecturer at RMIT who helped design the font. This simple puzzle engages the brain, making the text more memorable.

[niminy-piminy]

i hope to live once in a socio-economic system in which ladies from high society will suffer mental breakdowns because Goethe is absent...
(system in which social climbing ability (regardless of the gender) will correspond with longing for Goethe)

[niminy-piminy]

and this film is not even deprived of a droplet of a private language subject matter ("secret names", "noms de guerre").
(it has all the ingredients a truly alluring film can have)

[niminy-piminy]

cryptic letter feverish Friedrich Schiller wrote to the sisters...
(pure delight!)

[niminy-piminy]

and love letters going into the wrong hands (plus some cryptography)...
(can one ask for more in a film?)
(oke, i will stop making spoilers now)

[niminy-piminy]

oke, one more (the very last) picture...


plus two additional side notes...


plus one extra still...

[niminy-piminy]

BREAKING NEWS!
GOETHE IS BACK!

[MrCarmady]

seen 1, enjoyed it, currently in the process of making subs for it

eine stadt wird erpresst

grabbing a couple more, would be great if you left it open for a bit longer!

Die Freunde der Freunde

was very good, gonna put that on top instead and hopefully squeeze one more in.

[niminy-piminy]

Friedrich Schiller's lesson in creative writing...


and Goethe's additional note to the subject...
(illustrated with his somewhat irrational color wheel and a herbarium item)

[brian d]

ok you win, i'll watch it am i supposed to watch the 3 hour director's cut or the two hour 20 minute other cut?

[niminy-piminy]

ok you win, i'll watch it am i supposed to watch the 3 hour director's cut or the two hour 20 minute other cut?

i am watching the one labeled as "720p".
in Res. tomo (for anyone in need of some wit and post-enlightenment).
i am not sure tho, if my enthusiasm for the film comes from the film or from my today's jolly mood in general.
(or if it is somehow interrelated.)

[brian d]

the stills you posted are enough for me to be hooked, your enthusiasm just puts it over the top

[wba]

ok you win, i'll watch it am i supposed to watch the 3 hour director's cut or the two hour 20 minute other cut?

you absolutely have to watch the 3 hours "director's cut" (which is simply the regular version of the film). The "short" version sucks (it was made because of producers fearing that a 3 hours-long film wouldn't be as successfull at the box office and pressuring Graf to make a shorter version for theatrical release (which he was initially contractually obliged to deliver, I believe) and doesn't really make much sense. Graf would have in my opinion been better advised to have shortened it much more to something like 100 minutes, instead of trying to "squeeze in" the 3 hours into two and a half (which absolutely doesn't work).
The 3 hour version flies by like a breeze, so no worries there.

[niminy-piminy]

3 hour director's cut

now, in Res.

[niminy-piminy]

so, time to move on.
from Germany around 1800 to Germany before 1999.
the era of taking before-it-was-cool selfies...
YOUR BEST YEARS (Dominik Graf, 1999)

[nrh]

subs for politzieruf 110: cassandra's warning (director cut) submitted but not approved!

[niminy-piminy]

time to start another (besides "YOUR BEST YEARS") film (COLD SPRING, 2004)
with a birthday party as a departing point for the story...

[niminy-piminy]

after "YOUR BEST YEARS" i picked "COLD SPRING" (among DG films i still intend to watch) more or less randomly.
i checked first few moments of all the films still left and once i notice again the birthday party at the start i thought "oke, let's proceed".
and now i read (being in the middle of the film) in a review of COLD SPRING (by Ekkehard Knörer)...

The music working against the images, not with the images, already in the beginning, Dieter Schleip's atonal sounds, similar to the first scenes of Graf's "Deine besten Jahre" (the two films are part of the same trilogy) once again: a party, a woman who feels rather than knows that something is wrong, that nobody is telling her the truth.

which made me to search for the remaining title of the trilogy and here we go...

Graf fully indulges his melodramatic tendencies in Bitter Innocence (1999) and Cold Spring (2004), bookends to a trilogy with Your Best Years (1999) that savages the image of the upstanding German family with a causticity worthy of Fassbinder.

so, BTTER INNOCENCE is gonna be my next viewing.
(thx, nrh, once again for suggesting to me these movies!)

remarkable trio of melodramas, Deine besten Jahre (Your Best Years, 1999), Bittere Unschuld (Bitter Innocence, 1999), and Kalter Frühling (Cold Spring, 2003), which all take a cold hard look at the ghostly lives lived in bourgeois living rooms around the turn of the millennium in unified Germany

[flip]

i gather people are still watching graf films? let me know when i can tally this up

i did look into the sans forgetica font, and a later study suggested it didn't help with memory/retention, interesting idea though

[niminy-piminy]

a later study suggested it didn't help with memory/retention

it is always like this. once you dig deeper into something all you find ultimately is just bitterness and disappointment!
no wonder, Graf or Fassbinder became famous.
(i will proceed with Graf viewings but i am fine, if the current poll will be closed. i can vote for the rest, once the second round of Graf poll will take place.)