Dir. Costa-Gavras
The final film for this series. Hopefully you, the reader have gotten a lot from this. It has been a long, difficult project to complete; to write about these films required some thought and possibly more consideration than some that I have covered on my blog or Videotape Swapshop. The following choice befits the series, a reminder that this type of cinema also deals with the upfront, actual reality of the world it was made in and made to tackle. Its a reminder, as the film depicts the political turmoil of Greece in the early Sixties through hints, that the ability to have free speech is a tenuous one, that it can easily be lost. Art like the films I've covered could be lost. As much as I joked about this series being an antidote from Hollywood blockbusters at the introduction of the series, there are constant grim reminders that this kind of uncensored thoughts can be suffocated. It is not just war and political strife that can cause this, but also compliance and complicity, not just conservative but also liberal complicity, numbing of culture and a watering down of entertainment and art in favour of the insipid. The lack of courage, the lack of balls to be blunter, the lack of courage to be controversial, to take the easy way out. These films I have covered, even the ones made in the mainstream business of cinema, are not creations of pleasing the widest audience possible. They're not shrieking violets. They haven't been made to tick off checklists. They're not be made to please the troubling mindset of most cinema viewers now that it should be the equivalent of message porn, to make you concerned for the world only for a brief amount of time, like a perverse high from one's guilt, only to be able to push it to the side and not learn from it at all. Even something like The Holy Mountain (1974), embraced by cult audiences, is spiked with a mentality that, in the film, mocks the potential compliance of the supposed radicals, manufactured art, disco-shotguns and all.
Films I considered rewatching for the series included Angel's Egg (1985), Begotten (1990), Un Chien Andalou (1929), Herostratus (1967), Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997), and On the Silver Globe (1988). I recommend them all to you to see after those that were covered. I may review them all some day too. Films I wished to see for the first time for the series included Dandy Dust (1998), Mind Game (2004), Midori (1992), Pola X (1999) and X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963). I hope to still see them even if its not now.
Until then, I will be able to take a rest. Coming up in October is the next Halloween series. I will see you all then.
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