Interesting as a concept, if not entirely compelling as an end product.

Footage of a soccer game in Romania, being commented on thirty years later by the games referee (who had his life threatened if he officiated), and his son (who remembers being fearful of what might happen during the game). The concept is simple enough. We watch the game. We listen to the men carry on commentary of how they feel about this match, their country, and their relationship with eachother in these ensuing years. If it captured somethign, this could have been something really interesting. It seems the aim of the movie is trying to bring new meaning to something which may be seen as a perishable moment (a soccer match from long ago, that has long been settled and no longer matters) and how going back to watch such a seemingly irrelevant thing may uncover how these men feel about their countries fascistic past, about each other, about the meaning of sport etc. Except, they frequently don't do anything of the sort. Their conversation drifts into such banal observations of which players have muscular legs and which ones run the fastest and, most frequently, complete silence as they either are running out of things to say, or they are simply watching the game itself.

Maybe I need to know more about Romanian history. Maybe I need to know something about soccer. But for me this felt like a failed experiment. In concept, I get how this is something that can really only be attempted once. Capturing their conversation in the moment is essential for the film to have any meaning at all. It can't be edited down to the most brightest and sparkling moments. It can't have been rehearsed. It certainly couldn't be scripted. It just has to happen, involuntarily.

But what happens when not much is uncovered? What happens when you just end up watching an hour and a half long soccer game with the volume turned down and two people you don't know talking over it? Unfortunately, that's what much of this feels like.
 

Last edited by crumbsroom (6/08/2022 5:17 pm)

This really worked to put me off. It lives in world of dead pan cutesy weirdness that, unless brilliantly rendered, is just going to grate. And because of the films obvious budgetary limitations, as well as being under the finger of a filmmaker who clearly wasn't capable of tightening all the screws as necessary, it frequently came off as a cheap bit of home made surrealism. Kind of like something by Gondry, yet without his marvellous eye and imagination (but with all of the things I think ultimately sink a lot of his work ie. whimsy overkill).

But, about half way through, as I began to take its attempts to navigate its underlying themes of the relationship between dream life and reality, the flexibility of time, the pervasiveness of advertising etc. less and less seriously, and just paid more and more attention to what a silly thing it really was, the more I warmed up to it. And the more I took it on its own terms, the more I began to see light parallels between its crappy looking goofiness and the deliberately shoddy special effects David Lynch sometimes employs (specifically on his Twin Peaks reboot). Or how its attempts at grand emotions aren't all that different from the overt melodrama someone like Guy Maddin infuses his weirdness with. And slowly all these things which at first seemed like a draw back, became charming.

Now this doesn't absolve it of the fact that I don't think as a film it entirely passes muster. It frequently sags where it needs to pop. But there is the real genesis of some kind of vision going on here. Sort of like how you could see glimpses of what Tim Burton would become with Pee Wee's Big Adventure. It's there, even if its not completely assured yet. And the climax, beginning with an effective and kind of weirdly hilarious nightmare sequence, works well as everything slowly goes completely off the rails.


 

Rock wrote:

Hey Crumb, you ever seen anything by Damon Packard? The Important Cinema Club podcast did an episode on him recently, his work sounds up your alley.

I have not but I just watched one of his on YouTube, where a couple argue about vaccinations, crash cars and have a terrible run in with Santa Clause.

There is something going on here.

I see his 2 hour and 17 minute Reflections of Evil is on Tubi.

Last edited by crumbsroom (7/09/2022 1:23 pm)

I'm eventually going to have to say more about this, but at the moment there is just too much to comprehend. I've rarely come across a movie this isolated from humanity. This uncompromising in its endless, overwhelming lack of conformity. Maybe if we took a table saw to the top of director/star Damon Packard's head, shook out his brains, and stomped on them with our sneakers, we might approach some kind of approximation of what this is. I'm not sure. I just know it is a revelation of low budget cinema. Absolutely insane, absolutely unhinged, but unlike a lot of outsider art, very possibly methodically conceived and constructed. I might argue that this Packard is some kind of a legitimate genius.

Should this movie play alongside of trash heaps like A Night to Dismember or Things? Definitely. Like those, it manipulates our concept of time and taste and sense from one shot to the next. But let's not relegate Reflections of Evil to Barry J Gillis level quite so quickly. I think there are probably closer parallels to this film and Lynch's Eraserhead. Lynch is obviously much more at ease conveying traditional beauty along with his monstrous imagination, and it would probably be a stretch to say that Packard even approaches beauty at any point over the course of this two and a half hour behemoth. But he finds a direct conduit to the same kinds of unnameable horror and unease that Lynch excels at. Both films brought out similar feelings in me.

To me it is clear that something important is happening in this nightmare vision. It's hard to say exactly what though. But maybe it is only in the waking life of its creator we can possibly find its meaning. But this is not something we will never be privvy to. As much as he seems to show of himself in this, Packard remains completely hidden beneath the screaming paranoia of whatever the fuck this ultimately is. We will only be left with these disjointed and distorted scraps of self and societal loathing to comb over and be confounded by. And all that matters for me at the moment is how horrible and hilarious it all seems to be when we are barely awake.
 

This Reddit thread suggests there are supposed to be subtitles.

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/8fsbu7/comment/dy61hed/

As does this link.

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/borg-vs-mcenroe

"Characters speak their own native languages, translated in subtitles..."

Covid viewing. Brain not working but eyes still open. Sort of.

Get well soon, Crumb. Bruceploitation has been my sick and/or insomniac viewing as of late, goes down easier the less you think about it.

I saw Chameleon Street pop up on the Criterion Channel recently, so I will likely get to that soon. Maybe not this month though, as we're in the second half and I need to prioritize what's leaving at the end of the month.

I'll wait for Mad God to hit one of my services, but that's one I'm excited for.

Rock wrote:

Get well soon, Crumb. Bruceploitation has been my sick and/or insomniac viewing as of late, goes down easier the less you think about it.

Yes, I can imagine that could his the sweet spot when one just wants to not work too hard at the movie watching. I was similarly looking for a little junk food last night so, since my brain doesn't work properly even at the best of times, I of course chose this as the perfect time to re-watch Last Temptation of Christ.

It is now the only movie I can think of which I have exclusively watched while sick as a dog.

Two documentaries made in East Berlin shortly before the the Berlin Wall came down. The first, Who's Afraid of the Bogeyman, is particularly good in its depiction of a coal delivery service, the woman who runs in, and the rough around the edges drunken men who work for her. Captures the language and the life of the working class beautifully. Plus is shot in amazing black and white photography. Very very good.

The other, Bulky Trash (Sperrmull) is about a kid in a shitty punk band trying to make his way in the arts, while navigating life alone after his mother moves to the West to be with her berliner boyfriend. It does not have nearly the same level of poetic gravitas as the previous one, but the main kid and his mother are compelling enough in the ways they are trying to find their footing politically in such a place as this. Especially for the aspiring rock star, who finds lots to complain about his home country, but also seems to remain loyal to many of its causes.

Both of these films are by Helke Misselwitz, and neither are her best known film (Winter Ade) which I assume is going to be next on my list of documentary viewings.
 

Lives in a universe where a young suitors trip to surprise a girl he just met while she is on vacation with her family, is less the point of the whole affair, than the catalyst for many other friendships and loves to develop over the course of a week. The movie seems to understand the strange and nebulous way relationships develop when we are at an age when strangers are always coming in and out of our lives, making an indelible impact and disappearing just as quickly. A quietly observant movie that doesn't cheat in delivering its warm and summer tinged pleasures. Simple and yet never predictable. Optimistic, yet never naively so. A real treat.