SCFZ poll: Krzysztof Kieslowski

[sally]

And I watched it with my then-classmate Veronika.
As far as I remember, she was not a hard-core cinephile, but when (during some small talk) I mentioned going to see THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VÉRONIQUE she got intrigued by the title.
And I got intrigued by the idea to watch a film with someone whose name is identical to the name in the title.
Sometimes, the circumstances of watching a film have a stronger impact on memory than the film itself.

love this! one wonders how many other appropriate cinema companions there are. am afraid the closest i've ever come to this is reading a book set in an airport whilst i was waiting in an airport...

[MrCarmady]

Kurosawa was #2 on the poll Curtis ran recently, Tarkovsky was top 20, Kubrick top 26. Surprised by Antonioni, I feel like his aesthetic and sensibility is very much in line with this forum's. L'avventura did come 13th on the top 200 you guys did in 2019 but I guess he doesn't have a deep backlog for people to explore.

[thoxans]

Almodóvar

pedro fo sho. and yeah obvs kieslowski. think maybe bergman, fellini, kurosawa, and tarkovsky are mentioned less solely cuz there's nothing new to say...? also, most folks here probs watched their stuff a while ago, and have simply moved on, not necessarily out of disinterest or anything, just as part of some cinephilic progression. haneke and von trier you'll see mentioned in terms of dislike, and that's about it. and feel that bertolucci and yimou have also just fallen off in general; they both had their little periods of seeming importance, but that appears to have waned a lot in the years since for most moviegoers, not just super champs. and while i know aberration popped in and talked about his stuff recently, i don't think tarr is considered as any sort of titan of cinema (though i think he's great), as might be the case in the wider film community

[flip]

Some directors I've rarely seen mentioned here:

Kieslowski
Kurosawa
Fellini
Tarkovsky
Bergman
Haneke
von Trier
Almodóvar
WKW (until last week)
Zhang Yimou
Bertolucci

those are some good suggestions. i agree with brian about kurosawa and tarkovsky -- i'm partly thinking about our poll results, where some directors we maybe don't talk about much still do very well (i'd actually put both kubrick and antonioni in the same category as kurosawa and tarkovsky from that point of view). i think i'd divide those names up a bit like this:

directors scfz likes quite well (even if discussion about them isn't commensurate with their standing in world film)
tarkovsky
kurosawa
wong kar-wai

directors scfz seems fairly indifferent to
kieslowski
fellini
bergman
almodovar
zhang yimou
bertolucci

directors scfz seems to actively dislike (though i don't agree, at least in one case)
haneke
von trier

and thinking on it more, i'd add andrzej wajda to scfz's 'indifferent' list, and gaspar noe to the dislike list

[flip]

about names that have cropped up above, these directors have all placed a film in the top 10 in one of our 'scfz's favourite 100 films ever made' polls:

kubrick
tarkovsky
tarr
kurosawa
fellini

and these have in the top 20:

antonioni
bergman

so i guess it's probably not correct to describe scfz as indifferent to many of these filmmakers, and about bela tarr specifically, i think there's a lot of enthusiasm for his work around here

[ole dole doff]

one wonders how many other appropriate cinema companions there are.

After a bit of investigation, all i can offer is to be a companion to the screening of JIRI (Alice Reily De Souza, 2016).
But i am not sure if anything displayed in the film has anything to do with me particularly...

A sad dog sits by itself, until the Hand sees it and decides to cheer him up. At first with petting and tickling, but that does nothing. The Hand has a great idea: Let's do the funny dance! Still the dog doesn ́t seem to cheer up. The Hand starts to get irritated. Why doesn ́t the bloody dog smile? The cuddling starts to get stronger, a bit violent actually, but at least the dog finally reacts: now he is not sad anymore, he is angry instead. Angry?! After all the trouble the Hand went through to make the dog happy, the dog is angry?? No, that cannot possibly be true. This dog WILL be happy, even if it doesn ́t want to be. To be sure of that, the Hand puts a waggling tail on his behind and pins - just so there is no misunderstanding - a bright and shinning smiling expression on his face. Brilliant. Now the dog is happy, can ́t you see that? Now the dog can go and play with the other happy dogs.

https://youtu.be/Vd5e0RMTuoE

[nrh]

Surprised by Antonioni, I feel like his aesthetic and sensibility is very much in line with this forum's.

the thread for the antonioni poll from a few years back was not...enthusiastic about his work, although like the wkw poll i think that was largely because the people who didn't like the work were just posting a lot more than everyone else. though generally speaking i think of scfz as taking their seats next to the cottafavians at the alcazar.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Bergman, Kubrick, and Fellini are all worse than 'meh' to me. I do respect Antonioni a lot.

[thoxans]

about bela tarr specifically, i think there's a lot of enthusiasm for his work around here

i guess it just seems less vocal (outside of the polls)...? i know i've personally included satantango on multiple lists. noe is def in the dislike category tho

[ole dole doff]

And btw. when i observed...
1/ ppl tend to watch films by a certain director (actor, etc.) on the anniversary days of their birth & death
2/ whenever any filmmaker dies, local TV immediately puts on some films by him/her
3/ how all those RIP threads (on various cinephile forums) are popular
etc.
... i urged Kinometer mastermind to allow attaching to various "names" from the database their dates of birth & death and also to various "tags" their start date & end date.
Thus in the future on Kinometer, you will get (based on the calendar) alerts/suggestions what films (based on who made them or what is the story about) to watch in a particular day.

F.e. i attached to a tag "midsummer" start day 20/6 and end day 25/6 (cuz dates vary each year) and as a result those days one will get an alert/suggestion of all the films tagged "midsummer".
etc., etc., etc.
Or f.e. i attached to a tag "happiness" a date 20/3 because 20th March is International Day of Happiness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internati ... _Happiness

And as i attached now to the film JIRI (Alice Reily De Souza, 2016) tags "dogs", "hands", "happiness", "social pressure", then going (after a bit of "pressure") to the cinema to see this particular film (about "happiness") with some Jiri (eventually also taking with a "dog") on the 20th March can be a very special event.
This feature is on KM not yet fully developed (we are only in the phase of adding dates to names & tags) but it is one of the utopic plans!
It will be something like Hollis Frampton's MAGELLAN CYCLE — calendar and films interlinked.

[Roscoe]

BLUE

The only one of the THREE COLORS films I thought was worth the time it took to sit through it.

[Umbugbene]

Well it doesn't seem like we have a lot of wide-ranging conversations about film here (recent one in the WKW thread notwithstanding), so it seems strange to see some of these names tossed around as if we don't talk about them much... whom DO we talk about a lot? A lot of those directors' films show on our lists often enough.

That said, one who comes to mind is Terrence Malick. It just occurred to me today we've never even done a Malick poll (just as well as far as I'm concerned), although in any other random group of cinephiles today there'd be a few diehard Malick fans.

[MrCarmady]

Surprised by Antonioni, I feel like his aesthetic and sensibility is very much in line with this forum's.

the thread for the antonioni poll from a few years back was not...enthusiastic about his work, although like the wkw poll i think that was largely because the people who didn't like the work were just posting a lot more than everyone else. though generally speaking i think of scfz as taking their seats next to the cottafavians at the alcazar.

Wonder if we could get the views for Moullet, I've only seen a few.
I was also thinking of nominating Malick, Umbugbene, but he's got exactly 10 films which means that we'll get a ranking of them but not really a meaningful top 10. Could still be interesting, though, if only to see if others here love To the Wonder and Song to Song as much as I do. Maybe when the new one is released?

[greennui]

whom DO we talk about a lot?

I think "seek out and watch" might be a better term than "talk".

[Curtis, baby]

And I watched it with my then-classmate Veronika.
As far as I remember, she was not a hard-core cinephile, but when (during some small talk) I mentioned going to see THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VÉRONIQUE she got intrigued by the title.
And I got intrigued by the idea to watch a film with someone whose name is identical to the name in the title.
Sometimes, the circumstances of watching a film have a stronger impact on memory than the film itself.

love this! one wonders how many other appropriate cinema companions there are. am afraid the closest i've ever come to this is reading a book set in an airport whilst i was waiting in an airport...

Once when I was in the mental hospital, TCM was playing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but the staff wouldn't let me put it on in the lounge because they were worried it would be upsetting to people. I was very disappointed.

Before the plague struck, I had had a European backpacking trip planned. After I had booked everything, I decided to look up the cinema schedules in Berlin, and noticed that Symphony of a City, by far my favourite pre-Kautner German film, was playing in a historic theatre, with a live organ score, on my first night in Berlin.

One that worked ok, I saw The 400 Blows on my 10,000th day, but I mean that was totally my doing and anyone can do it so it's not as cool as if either of those other two had happened.

[ole dole doff]

I was very disappointed.

disappointment perfectly understandable.
what a missed opportunity!

[flip]

whom DO we talk about a lot?

i feel like directors like raul ruiz, jacques rivette, hong sang-soo, eric rohmer, chantal akerman, and quite a lot of others are names that show up on this forum a lot -- a lot more than i'd expect if i was some random film-watcher just happening upon a film forum. i guess i'm thinking about mentions in 'what i watched this month' and in poll voting along with actual conversation when i think about this kind of thing.

and malick is a great name to add to the list.

[bipolarvision]

seen 8

a short film about killing
the double life of veronique
three colors: blue
camera buff

[flip]

Seen 8:

haven't heard from filmjunkie yet, and since they don't post here often, i think i'll open things up -- mesnalty, you're welcome to pick our next director (unless filmjunkie posts first)!

[Umbugbene]

whom DO we talk about a lot?

i feel like directors like raul ruiz, jacques rivette, hong sang-soo, eric rohmer, chantal akerman, and quite a lot of others are names that show up on this forum a lot -- a lot more than i'd expect if i was some random film-watcher just happening upon a film forum. i guess i'm thinking about mentions in 'what i watched this month' and in poll voting along with actual conversation when i think about this kind of thing.

Okay makes sense. Still, I think one reason directors like Bergman, Fellini, Kubrick, and Tarkovsky get fewer mentions or recent viewings is that most of us passed through the "great classics" phase before joining SCFZ, so those films are more likely to be distant memories than films by Akerman or Hong that we're likely to catch up on at a later stage.

As for Antonioni, as far as I'm concerned no one else is in the same league. But to appreciate him you need to escape the prevailing critical hang-up on "alienation", "ennui", and "modernist style". He's after something far bigger than that.

[mesnalty]

Seen 8:

haven't heard from filmjunkie yet, and since they don't post here often, i think i'll open things up -- mesnalty, you're welcome to pick our next director (unless filmjunkie posts first)!

I'll pass and let Searchlike have a go!

[flip]

Was I fast enough?

Edit:
Nooooooooo! FilmJunkie, whyyyyy???? You beat me to it, haha!

now's your chance! if you post a director suggestion before filmjunkie, we'll go with your pick

[thoxans]

Was I fast enough?

pro tip: we have yet to poll the inimitable rob reiner

[Searchlike]

now's your chance! if you post a director suggestion before filmjunkie, we'll go with your pick

Leo McCarey. Thanks, flip!

[flip]

okay, i'll start up a leo mccarey poll tomorrow!

[Searchlike]

I'll pass and let Searchlike have a go!

Thanks, mesnalty. You guys are too nice.

[john ryan]

seen 23

1. The Double Life of Veronique
2. Three Colors: Red
3. A Short Film about Killing
4. Camera Buff
5. Hospital

[...]

Camera Buff
The Scar

The Double Life of Véronique (if seeing the first two episodes of the Dekalog counts seen 5 without, seven with.)

[cinesmith]

1. Decalogue

2. Three Colors: Red
3. Three Colors: Blue
4. Double Life of Veronique
5. Three Colors: White
6. No End
7. Blind Chance
8. Camera Buff

[flip]

results

1. Rouge (1994) — 35 pts
2. Dekalog (1989) — 28 pts
2. Blue (1993) — 28 pts
4. The Double Life of Veronique (1991) — 22 pts
5. A Short Film About Killing (1988) — 19 pts
6. Camera Buff (1979) — 14 pts
7. Talking Heads (1980) — 10 pts
8. Blind Chance (1987) — 9 pts
9. No End (1985) — 4 pts
9. White (1994) — 4 pts
11. Personnel (1975) — 3 pts
11. The Scar (1976) — 3 pts
13. The Office (1995) — 2 pts
13. The Photograph (1995) — 2 pts
13. A Short Film About Love (1988) — 2 pts
16. Railway Station (1980) — 1 pt
16. Hospital (1977) — 1 pt