Point Pleasant (2005)

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Creator: John McLaughlin and Marti Noxon

Cast: Elisabeth Harnois as Christina Nickson; Grant Show as Lucas Boyd; Sam Page as Jesse Parker; Aubrey Dollar as Judy Kramer; Dina Meyer as  Amber Hargrove; Cameron Richardson as Paula Hargrove; Clare Carey as Sarah Parker; Brent Weber as Terry Burke; Susan Walters as Meg Kramer 13 episodes; Richard Burgi as Ben Kramer; Alex Carter as Sheriff Logan Parker; Ned Schmidtke as Father Matthew; John Diehl as David Burke; Adam Busch as Wes; Marcus Coloma as Father Tomas; Elizabeth Ann Bennett as Holly

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

The Omen: The New Jersey Shore Years? Call this the result of listening to a podcast about cancelled tv series, Cancelled Too Soon, but I have gone out watch the material they have covered, and usually covered it on this blog alongside my own oddities, all in spite of the fact that, beyond anime and certain significant titles, my interest in television is virtually nonexistent. I gave up television just for watching DVDs (and streaming) about ten years ago out of disinterest in the product and being sick of adverts. In many ways, seeing the style and tone of a show like Point Pleasant, which I once grew up with, is better now in terms of being able to judge the material when it isn't saturated in my everyday life and can be a different experience from the rest of what I watch. Stepping out of my comfort zone is worthwhile, especially when this thirteen episode series, from co-writer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Marti Noxon on board, is a teen soap opera where the female lead is the Antichrist immediately tickled me pink as a premise.

She washes up at Point Pleasant and goes by the name of Christina Nickson (Elisabeth Harnois), daughter of Satan and a human woman as established immediately. Caught between his minions, mainly former human Lucas Boyd (Grant Show) trying to egg her on to kick-start the Apocalypse, and the deeply divided but kind Kramer family who keep her humanity, the melodrama intermingles with the religious horror (as she unwillingly draws out peoples' worst sides in the first few episodes), but also tempers it in its own unique bombast as her state of mind gets rolled about over the episodes.

The first thing that comes to mind now, with time to reflect on the series, is the Twilight franchise, which for all the understandable criticisms was enjoyable for the first film, all because it retold horror genre tropes through this type of intimate melodrama about characters first; alongside the increasing issues with the gender politics, the death kneel for me that it became obsessed in the later films with the scourge of mainstream cinema, lore and CGI ladled fight scenes with the moments of interesting dynamic, of a romantic triangle between a mortal woman with a vampire and a werewolf, dwindled out more and more. Point Pleasant dangerously veered to this near its finale, more intrigued by the religious horror we have seen in a lot of work before and after, but never became overcome by it thankfully.

Again, when you've purposely isolated yourself off this type of mainstream American TV, as I did, it's nice to occasionally watch a work like this that, slick and conventional, feels like a change of pace rather than drilled into me as a constant prescience. There's little that has dated baring the occasional CGI (evil black birds in particular), not feeling like the early 2000s in frosted tops in the hair or a pop punk/post-nu metal soundtrack, instead set in a quiet beach town whose residents are mild manned but start to become enveloped in a less transgressive version of Peyton Place (1957). Whether they are mild mannered - Sarah (Clare Carey), church devotee and mother of lifeguard Jesse who rescues Christie - or from soap opera - her sceptical, angry and easily jealous cop husband Sheriff Logan Parker (Alex Carter), or friend and notorious man chaser divorcee Amber Hargrove (Dina Meyer) - or from teen drama - the aforementioned Jesse (Samuel Page), who with Christie has a won't-they-will-they crush or the many frequently shirtless young men in the cast - there's enough to work with in stories. It's to a virtue for all its macabre tone, even getting Danny Elfman to compose the main theme, that it's still a melodrama at heart that is timeless to any era.

It actually, unintentionally, exposes how in terms of Christian lore as is interpreted by popular culture how pointless and misguided the plans of literal demons are. Destroying the Earth here is actually a waste of resources the longer you listen to the likes of Boyd, even when Grant Show steals scenes like an evil cad, when a more pragmatic and practical goal (when Earth allows, for every good person, many evil ones too) would be more worthwhile, such as just pushing Christie to a hierarchy of power where Satan would get more resources for his side. Even the one attempt at nuisance, to dispose the failed experiment of mankind, is just exposing how Western pop entertainment is severely falling behind the likes of Eastern pop entertainment where even a villain in a children's show had actually sound arguments to their ideas.

In reality, and why I am actually glad the series ended at one season as this became more increasingly relied upon, the more absurd aspect of the entire series isn't the soap opera but the religious horror, especially when it becomes more increasingly relied upon, and the weakest parts are those which are entirely plot lines from a tedious horror film from around this era.  A lot of what comes off as camp, even when it's still entertaining because of the melodrama, is entirely the apocalyptic material, 666 literally tattooed on Christine's eye and enough clichés to decorate your walls with appearing, including for all I know ones from the Italian Satanic panic rip off films made in the seventies. If I ever properly read the Bible, beyond going to a school as a child the vicar frequently visited and the one time I read Revelations for some reason, I'll gladly wager to you the reader that, for all the contradictory and problematic scripture, the religion that gestated Dante's Divine Comedy, and William Blake's poetry and art, is both far more morally and intellectually stimulating than the usual tropes of devils disturbing the priesthood, to batardise a Black Sabbath song title, whilst being underused to a detriment for great entertainment. So much so, and why Point Pleasant won me over, that the earnest if over-the-top melodrama managed to refresh the kind of clichés I'd eye roll at and add spark to them.

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This is more so having grown up with a lot of generic satanic horror in the late nineties to early 2000s, such as when Arnold Schwarzenegger fought Satan in Arnold Schwarzenegger, giving something like this from much later and after its co-creator created such a major nineties horror series beforehand more credit for just taking a risky gamble. (And that's in knowledge, from the likes of American Gothic (1995-6), that shows like this come from ten years earlier that follow this genre blending premise and are now of great interest to me). It makes the material much more rewarding even if there's as much subterfuge and misdirects to spin episodes longer than logically there should, all due to teenage angst and inexplicable bog zombies cameos, to romantic rivalry or characters developing abrupt serial killer urges. Here, a priest discovering Christie's secret, only to get killed by a burning boat accident, is made compelling again when the boat's part of an annual boating festival, in an episode as concerned that Jessie's original girlfriend Paula (Cameron Richardson), daughter of Amber Hargrove, is jealous he's being wooed to Christine whilst said mother is eyeing up Ben Kramer (Richard Burgi), a doctor with skeletons in his own closet as well as a wife Meg Kramer (Susan Walters) who has had mental illness since the loss of her older daughter Isabelle, but is also revealed later in the series to have actual supernatural aspects behind this. That, over forty four minutes per episode, alongside being tongue twister of a sentence to read, just gives you an example of how much is crammed into just one early episode. It is such a breath of relief from po-faced but average religious horror I've grown up with, to watch this instead; many which barely get anywhere, despite being on a global scale, are dwarfed by a work that focuses on one town but has so many stories, subplots and character interactions intertwining with each other.

It also means my growing admiration with melodrama is with good reason - once housed with "women's pictures" in cinema, like those made by Douglas Sirk, its arguably a vibrant, layered art where even something more trashier here helps get a lot of nuisance from this premise. Even if I've found the evil side's plans utterly pointless and one dimensional, the melodrama makes sure there is something else to add engagement to these characters. It allows good performances at least. Dina Meyer, most well known for Starship Troopers (1997) and a lot of television has always been good, as a woman who sides with Boyd to seduce Dr. Kramer only for her humanity especially to her friend Meg Kramer to become a greater factor, Susan Walters as Mrs. Kramer herself giving a potentially trite character (mental health issues, actually with supernatural gifts) more humility especially as the series progresses. And of course, Grant Show's Boyd is good, more so when his back story shown in Episode 5 ("Last Dance") casts more light on his previous life and leads to a new character being introduced later on; set within the Great Depression for part of its length, as Boyd recreates a dance marathon in the current day town, Episode Five is arguably the best as, whilst it has silly details like the aristocracy of old Point Pleasant gleefully watching impoverished couples dance to near death, it adds to his character when before he was one dimensional, despite Show's magnetism, and has a remake of Carrie (1978) with a blood shower and a disco ball of death that is a plus for any television episode.

If there's any moment which feels like Point Pleasant stretches itself, it's at the climax. It does lean, as mentioned already, further into the religious horror the further it goes, introducing a mirror to Christie's Antichrist which is dramatically ironic for tragedy, but thankfully for all the moments where the melodrama merely takes a backseat or is merely a catalyst for the other half, such as a secret group of anti-Antichrist individuals not above emotional blackmail for their sacred cause, there's plenty to still appreciate. The final episode in particular, likely made with knowledge Point Pleasant was to be cancelled, goes knee deep into a crazed family psychodrama, one slightly undernourished in production but still literally with hell breaking loose as [PLOT SPOILER] Christie turns full blown evil like an angry super powered teenager [PLOT SPOILER ENDS], the dead brought back just to psychologically damage siblings whilst someone complains about stale cookies. Even if you skipped that spoiler, I can reveal that, whilst the show clearly wanted another season and a bigger budget, Point Pleasant still got a conclusion which is open ended, but of great importance, feels like a natural conclusion most cancelled series wished they had. The issue of whether this series would've dropped that great melodrama comes to mind, but what we got was assured for this and thankfully ended on its best virtues.

It was a series I'm surprised didn't last. It is, for all its quirks, the kind of PG-13 work with a bit of sex (no nudity but a bit of hinted at facsimile alongside many shirtless guys) and horror that, with its heightened emotion, should've gotten a fan base as well as won me over decades later. Obviously, as well for me, it's probably for the better it only lasted this long so any stagnation didn't corrupt its virtues, but the mix if anything is the kind I wish took place more in Hollywood cinema. Again, Twilight is evoked as that should've been like this, with bigger production value, but squandered its best in the first film for a convoluted, boring lore of action fantasy rather than its original romantic love triangle as interpreted by Universal horror monsters. Pointedly as a criticism as, with a female lead, Point Pleasant can so be read as a metaphor for adolescence, the moral chasms she has to face as much a character trying to find her morality whilst every other drama is an exaggeration of real life issues soap operas use. Again, especially if Point Pleasant focused even more on its community that just also happened to be a warring state between the forces of good and evil, "The Omen: The Jersey Shore Years" despite being an opening review joke was a perfect description of what it should've followed fully and at times thankfully did.

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Not Reconciled (1965)

Director: Jean-Marie Straub

Screenplay: Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet

Based on a novel by Heinrich Böll

Cast: Heinrich Hargesheimer/ Carlheinz Hargesheimer  as Heinrich Fähmel; Martha Staendner/ Danièle Huillet as Johanna Fähmell; Ulrich Hopmann / Henning Harmssen as Robert Fähmel; Joachim Weiler as Joseph Fähme; Eva-Maria Bold as Ruth Fähmel; Hiltraud Wegener as Marianne; Ernst Kutzinski/Ulrich von Thüna as Schrella

Not Reconciled is a film of significance in the Straub-Huillet filmography in that, on the surface, is an incredibly difficult movie. Adapting from Heinrich Böll again, who provided the source for their first creation, short film Machorka-Muff (1963), Not Reconciled's narrative could spin out an entire two plus hour feature, three generations of the Fähmel family told with World War I and World War II as their backdrop, their lasting effect on Germany depicted through this family. Straub-Huillet, forgoing the ordinary, crush this into fifty three minutes, a whole plot but so trimmed down to the point Not Reconciled (full title Not Reconciled or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules) is truly a film you need to see more than once to appreciate. This is a curious thing as, baring repeat screenings in repertory cinemas, this concept is an idea made more easily available decades later in physical media and streaming but a) Not Reconciled (like Straub-Huillet's body of work) was difficult to see once not long ago and b) it's a habit even I am blameable in not taking advantage of, the chemical disposition of the brain that demands "new" viewings and idleness a blight of mine. Thankfully, I watched Not Reconciled more than once.

Here is the paradox with the film - on a first viewing its abstract in how it completely negates the spare time usually denoted to make sense of the narrative, yet when you get what's happening on a repeat viewing, it's not abstract or even remotely avant-garde, just very modernist and precise filmmaking that was (and still is frankly) ahead of its time from the duo. Yet, again, that innovation is unique if not also abstract, so it adds confusion and frustration when most in my spot would say, absolutely, that it's "abstract".   

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The plot, once decoded, is very clear if the dynamic duo refuse to do beyond voice over or dialogue to describe certain events, leaving one to picture them in our minds or to use the images provided to built a greater emotional resonance attached to them. There are three generations - the first, the second and the third. The first are Heinrich Fähmel and Johanna Fähmell. Heinrich - is an architect who went on to help create a magnificent cathedral in the midst of his curious working habits including a taste for paprika in his morning breakfast; however his wife Johanna, as a result of personal trauma and hostility to the ongoing mania of World War I, openly starts saying anti-Kaiser sentiments in public causing social embarrassment. Whilst it is Heinrich's own son Robert who will help destroy his father's cathedral in his opposition to the Nazis, it is Johanna as an elderly woman who will take the only direct step in response to the collective trauma by acquiring an old gun at of a greenhouse. The second generation is Robert, the son who became a dissident, a trauma in his youth created due to persecution for his involvement with a religious group fixated on the lamb (and knitting) that led to him becoming a demolition expert against the Nazis, all whilst his history both involves having to smuggled to safety (by being wrapped up in a carpet and smuggled on a boat), and also the lost of a loved one as a result of the Nazis. The final generation is Robert's son Joseph, jaded from following on in his architectural studies, whilst in love with a girl, but traversing the site where the destroyed cathedral is with her, the destroyed environments left to be rebuilt and their scars left for us to glance over.

That's not, in the damndest, an attempt at an accurate synopsis, Not Reconciled a very dense and condensed take on Heinrich Böll's novel Billiards at Half-Past Nine, but I will give Not Reconciled so much credit that, like the perfect novella, once you figure out what is exactly going on (even on another viewing) it grows in heft in terms of its language and the emotional gravitas as you are finally able to digest it. There's also the fact that, whilst of the older style of European art cinema in terms of calm pace, a period in betwixt the French New Wave setting a firework under techniques like editing where there were still calm and mannered works like this, this film by completely subtlety is still innovative in forcing the viewing on their toes in ingesting said information. The director/writers would include even more overtly jarring techniques in other work, such as Robert Bresson levels of minimal acting and even having rules (to this day after Huillet's death) for the subtitles to drop out at certain points in certain films, but it's fascinating how in spite of their legendarily po-faced seriousness, to the point at a party thrown by the Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci people joked about hiding the booze the moment the Straub-Huillets appeared¹, they were insanely modern and innovative in these films. This type of precise and matter-of-fact way in cutting the chaff pointed in its ideas, on the spectre of two World Wars on Germany, is entirely inspired the more you think about it.

It's also exceptionally well made, arguably an underappreciated virtue how a film like this was so carefully made and, even here, insanely stylish in a subdued formalism, not a paradox if you consider that, for Not Reconciled to work, the director/writers would've have had to plan out, adapting from an already experimental book no less rather than their own original ideas, what to keep and how to tell it in dialogue and the combination of images. The layering, to confuse one on the first viewing whether we're now in World War I and World War II, is subtle but even that would've been a logistical nightmare to edit together. Especially in lieu of the current day's extreme realism, post-Dogma 95 which requested directors almost stripping away every piece of artifice, this film also looks too stylised and carefully put together with images in mind to NOT be anything by aesthetically styled.

Again, it this truly avant-garde or, for here, even abstract? It's innovative, definitely. Abstract? Going to have to be yes, but with complete knowledge that due to the fact it grows in clarity if you watched it enough, a breeze at fifty three minutes, it's a low mark on the scale as a penalty.  Apt as one of the scenes is on a sports field near the beginning and, like the title, Robert tells his life story to a small boy over a personal game of billiards. Including probably as violent a destroying of a piece of wooden sports equipment as you could get, it's an act of sudden violence, stamping it and pushing down until it breaks in twine, that is bookmarked by the end by what Johanna Fähmell does with the old pistol, ending almost on a comedic note with the matter-of-fact fallout to it.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

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1) HERE (Nice to know even high art European film makers can take the piss out of each other in humour)

Serial Experiments Lain (1998)

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Director: Ryutaro Nakamura

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka

(Voice) Cast: Ayako Kawasumi as Mika Iwakura; Rei Igarashi as Miho Iwakura; Ryunosuke Ohbayashi as Yasuo Iwakura; Yoko Asada as Alice Mizuki

A 1000 Anime Crossover

This is from my other blog 1000 Anime, the same review but with additional material added to the end. As not all my reviews for that blog, covering anime, would be appropriate for this blog's subject, follow the link to the original review HERE and take a gander at the various other reviews you have been missing out on from there.

When Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) became a massive cultural supernova, including its 1997 theatrical alternative ending End of Evangelion, there were many attempts to ride its coat tails in terms of more adult anime. There were many attempts at an "Evangelion Killer", mecha shows which tried to follow varying from highly regarded work like RahXephon (2002) to failures like Brain Powrd (1998). The other aspect about Evangelion is that it almost became a giant flag held aloft for more unconventional and experimental anime television series to appear even if it never had any direct influence. Certainly though, between the controversies surrounding some of Evangelion's content and that, in the last half, Hideaki Anno's known personal and mental health issues were literally leading to episodes using line drawings, the fact Envangelion actually succeeded rather than crashed and burned would've allowed braver work to appear more easily if other production companies wondered if there was now a market to start creating them. Certainly experimental OVAs and theatrical films existed, but in terms of television series before Evangelion? A question to consider, mainly due to the difficult in watching every show that came before and after Evangelion to plot out a history, especially as under its shadow into the modern day, there's been many odd and bold creative works in existence even in micro-series comedies that have appeared. One of the earliest to appear immediately after Evangelion, which can be confirmed, was the cerebral sci-fi series Serial Experiments Lain, which still has a warm reputation in the West to this day.

Lain's story is incredibly relevant in the 2010s, amazingly prescient on issues we are coming to terms with about the internet and the potential existential and sociological problems with it, all in mind that whilst the internet is briefly references, this exists in a world where it's been replaced with the Navi instead of computers and its own form of the internet called the "Wired". Thankfully, this means, regardless of visual details, there's no concern of this having dated anyway since the technology already looked alien to any world and the ideas are of greater concern. It helps, from this, the series never tried to create an accurate vision of the future, instead looking at the fears and concerns of this machinery even in terms of spirituality as we follow the titular Lain, a teenage girl stuck in perpetual childishness at first and utterly computer illiterate until she and the girls in her class start getting texts from a classmate who had commit suicide previously. As she becomes obsessed with the Wired, head screenwriter Chiaki J. Konaka nosedives as she does into a world of philosophy, a potential God on the Wired communicating to her, and some sobering and accurate predictions on concerns we are getting to twenty plus years later from Serial Experiments Lain.

Identity theft and the obscurity the web allows? Lain finds there's an alternative version of herself online who is much bolder and even evil. Data security and personal information being compromised? Said version of Lain leads to Lain herself being accused as a peeping tom at school. Secret online groups and computer hacking? The Knights of Eastern Calculus, eerily similar to the semi-fictional organisation of expert Lisp and Scheme hackers called the Knights of the Lambda Calculus, a hacking group who will even lead people to being harmed or maimed by attacking any technology, such as traffic light systems to blurring a children's tag game with a shooter, who want to break the barrier between the "Real" World and the digital one. Existentialism and post-humanism? The idea some individuals want to evolve human beings to leave their bodies and becoming permanent consciousnesses online. Hell, throw in conspiracy theories in general too, though the only weird detail, which is weird and the only one which dates the series to back when the nineties run of The X-Files was, is where the hell the cameo by a literal green alien came from in Konaka's mind.

Lain as a series does eventually become esoteric; at first, it skims the waters of horror so much it feels like it's going to become a permanent resident, with literal phantoms haunting Lain even in the day and the telephone lines bleeding. It also emphasises how good the show was aesthetically. Now, probably the biggest surprise for me returning was that, having always been available on DVD through MVM, the original version was incredibly muddy in hindsight to the point it added to the mood, leaving the experience of seeing this thirteen episode series again on a recent restoration looking like a brand new work. Its emphasised how even on a television budget the production took its potential restrictions as an advantage, boldness in its natural look contrasting heightened colour and lighting choices. Of note too, more pertinent now in comparison to each other, the character designer is Yoshitoshi ABe, creator of the original dōjinshi of Haibane Renmei, adapted into a 2002 anime which also feels like it's in the shadow of Evangelion in terms of very creative and utterly unique animated television, a very unconventional afterlife parable with the same muted style and slow burn pace Serial Experiments Lain has¹.

Again, as I've rightly remembered for years, the first few episodes feel like sci-fi horror, the images of humming electrical wires and the sense of desolate streets even in ordinary busy Japanese streets evoking what Kiyoshi Kurosawa would later go with for Pulse (2001). Contrast this with the night time scenes, with heavy neon green lighting, or the increasing influence of the computer technology through the plot, even turning into an almost bio-mechanical entity in Lain's bedroom, the floor wet in coolant, covering the entire room where once she still had plush toys everywhere. The world of the Wired is just as distinct and strange, metaphor and symbolically doing its best to perfectly imaging  an internet chatroom by representing gossiping avatars by being merely lips or eyes, or how in fear of others taking her identity, the same figures have mannequin heads of Lain on their shoulders in a darkened room in cyberspace. In knowledge that in this world, Lain herself practically enters the Wired beyond symbolic meaning, these literal visitations around unique environments are as much there to get to Chiaki J. Konaka's obsession with constantly breaking reality into pieces in most of what he writes, he both notorious and distinct in how the literal and the metaphorical are deliberately blurred in his work even for live action films like Evil Dead Trap 2 (1991); even for a children's show like Princess Tutu (2002) about ballet and fairy tales, when it gets to an inter-dimensional clockwork world where the "author" of the show exists, you can tell which episode Konaka was writing among other script writers when it's the one with the most meta and unconventional philosophy even if the target demographic was kids first. 

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Sound is also of importance, and not just for the inspired choice of a song by a British band on the opening credits, Bôa given a lasting cult reputation just from anime fans who had their song ] become an earworm, but on the emphasis too on sound design that crawls under the skin. It's completely comparable to Boogiepop Phantom (2000), another highly experimental show fromn this era, between them offering nuisance noise and electronic effects.

[Major Spoiler Warning]

As mentioned, this series is from Konaka, an incredibly divisive screenwriter who leads Lain to becoming difficult at points, early into the series shattering reality when even a giant deity like Lain, to her own surprise, appears up in the clouds for children to stare up to. Later episodes get into even arguments about the existence of God, an entire episode on intermingling real history of the internet and the likes of Project Xanadu with UFO conspiracy and the introduction of "Deus", a figure (Eiri) formerly human who has become a self proclaimed God of the Wired, and one episode (Infornography) whose first half if a compilation of images from previous episodes, all to represent Lain downloading an entire Navi system into her own brain, matched by a guitar riff you could grow a mullet from. Probably the biggest factor, though, which might divide viewers, is when Lain is shown not to merely by an ordinary character, who is brought into these strange events, but is part of a character arch of a unique one-off figure rediscovering her own abilities, a being (possibly through an ESP experiment talked of halfway through) capable of going beyond the Wired to actual God-like abilities. This is controversial as a plot point as, as shown in the worst examples of modern franchise blockbusters in fact, it does limit the connectability of the story from the viewer. I feel however that, especially as the first few episodes feel random, the narrowing of the narrative not only helps the show and but, as it focuses on specific characters, the real virtue of the characterisation appears.

[Spoilers End]

Another thing I forgot, for all its esoteric and eerie shenanigans, was how emotional the show eventually is. Here I admit, for its entire cool atmosphere, and general sense of complete strangeness, actually the real virtue turns out to be the bitter-sweet tale of Lain trying to find happiness. Only close to Alice Mizuki, a school friend, her isolation in the world and how attempt to grow on the Wired (literally) is fraught with further isolation, here a tale which does anchor the entire series with a greater meaning. All the philosophy is weighted ultimately by how as much it connects to her too, evoked when rather than the usual opening before the credits (a male voice over text) she opens the final episode talking directly to us about whether she actually exists or not. All the eccentricities are softened by how utterly emotional the show finally is within the final scenes.

This means Serial Experiments Lain earns its pretensions. Chiaki J. Konaka is notorious for his clear hatred for conventional linear storytelling, but there is so much about the dangers of the physical world against the digital one which have become ever more salient. It also makes sure the characters are of interest around Lain too. Her family, very disconnected, are so for a reason and builds itself to one single scene of emotional resonance; even two men in black, with cybernetic eyeglasses which stalk outside her house, get personalities and enough humanity to why they are there that their fate as everything turns pear shape is significant. That's ultimately, upon returning to this show, why I still love Serial Experiments Lain.

I once, on the first viewing, dismissed it with the same misguidedness I dismissed Boogiepop Phantom, another of these bold and innovative works from under the shadow of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Second time, many years later, it was the surreal and unconventional tone, on the borderline to horror and sci-fi, completely introspective and psychological, which won out. Now, this is in mind still but the drama is all what's left at the end and actually touching in the end. Certainly for me, when you start most series, you should hope for a progression where the final episode is that you'd never expect it to end as from just the first episode, said progression felt throughout natural or at least an escalation in drama, emotional and/or spectracle. Certainly, with Lain this is as good as you could get with this natural progression.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric/Avant-Garde/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

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1) It would be an utter disservice not to mention producer Yasuyuki Ueda, who helped put together this show knowing the risk. He produced Lain, Haibane Renmei (working with Yoshitoshi ABe a lot), and a lot of work between the experimental to more adult, from Texhnolyze (2003) to Hellsing Ultimate (2006), that have been pretty well regarded and even successful.

The Phantom of Liberty (1974)

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Director: Luis Buñuel

Screenplay: Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière

Cast: Adriana Asti; Julien Bertheau; Jean-Claude Brialy; Adolfo Celi; Anne-Marie Deschodt; Paul Frankeur; Pierre Lary; Michael Lonsdale; Pierre Maguelon; François Maistre; Hélène Perdrière; Michel Piccoli; Claude Piéplu; Jean Rochefort; Bernard Verley; Monica Vitti

Rationality leaves the room when an emu enters it, something I first learnt from Luis Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty. I've also learnt that, from his later films, I prefer the more overly scenario structured and stranger films to his dramas, not to dismiss the later, as they are excellent too, but that the director of Un Chien Andalou (1929) kept the talent of that legendary short film and showed it in these more overtly unconventional productions. Time has made the targets of his films far less subversive and funnier at points than others, but the absurd depictions of banal reality still stand out strong, his deliberately profane scenes less shocking than the cynicism of the modern world.

The Phantom of Liberty is one of his most experimental works from the end of his career, built from a series of dreams rattled off between him and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière which take on a vignette form. This is taken in a still radical direction however in how every segment is interlinked by following different characters that appear in previous segments, creating an ever widening web as they reoccur. In terms of any theme, this elaborate web featuring a sleuth of Buñuel alumni collects together numerous obsessions from morality to social behaviour, hypocrisy to his usual desire for the morbid.

The thing is that, like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), this is for me one of his best films as, reverting back to his older surreal work and hitting a great creative structure here, he manages some of the best moments in this particular work by merely changing one little detail in an ordinary circumstance and just happens to create something surreal as a result. An obvious joke, whilst more shocking today, is a man giving photos to two young girls in a playground. It is telegraphed early these photos will be banal but reacted to like they are obscene but, even now that in the modern day this joke would be quicker in being told, there's still a better result for me in letting the punch line drag out, especially as the answer is inherently weird in itself - why Buñuel and Carrière choose lewd photos of European architecture, and what that symbolises if anything, is itself truly stranger.

From https://archive.ica.art/sites/default/files/styles/banner-landscape/public/
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The simplicity of telling these jokes becomes inspired - the nocturnal nightmares of one man involve the emu, time rushing forwards and a postman who only delivers mail he's in bed, whilst the most famous sketch has people sat on toilets whilst eating is considered obscene. Then there are the more blackly humorous or just completely dark moments which add layers to the proceedings. As much as having priests, after consoling a woman over a lost loved one, eventually drinking and gambling with her is funny, as is Michael Lonsdale in arseless leather chaps wanting to be spanked in front of said priests, the darker and more poignant stabs stand out to as a sharp change of pace which stand out as much. They come in moments such as a male character realising his doctor's been hiding the fact he has cancer and slaps him, a reminder that, even at his lightest, Buñuel still descended into both the follies of human behaviour and its moments of bleakness. Then there are the moments which are unique his and Carrière's idiosyncrasies - most comedies don't have a prologue set in the past, in which a statue of a deceased lord takes offense to a knight lasciviously touching the statue of his late wife nearby, which is never resolved on purpose as it smash cuts to the then-modern day and gets to the main film itself.

Both in terms of the absurdity of life and, in the title, prodding at the general elusiveness of freedom, it follows Buñuel's long withstanding animosity with organised groups in general.  Not just an axe to grind with Catholicism but everyone - the police are literally children, posting pins on the teacher's chair, the upper classes are distracted or involved with nude incestuous piano playing, the middle class are too distracted to notice their missing daughter is right near them (even admitting her existence to her), and the only innocent characters there being the children and (occasionally) the lower classes. And it doesn't stop the film having politics - even if the ending is strange, because it's the police coming down on people to prevent them from moving about in a zoo, it's still the police in full riot gear charging unseen group of bystanders, violence heard off-screen whilst we see images of animals. And of course, even more troubling as a sketch in the current day, thre's the entire segment of the man who decides to find an isolated room in a skyscraper and start taking random bystanders out with a sniper rifle, an uncomfortable image for good reason considering the history of gun shootings that have taken place just in the United States in the 2010s, but pertinent in its darkness in how even when given a trial with a death sentence he merely gets to walk off (and sign autographs) as a figure for the public to look up to.

By this point, Luis Buñuel whilst at the end of his career was still learning new ways to make his films, a greater fluidity being found with this production alongside decades' worth of experience beforehand allowing him to make films like this with a greater ease. An awareness of how quickly ideas were being put together for The Phantom of Liberty for me as a viewer adds so much more to its original virtues I already adored. Certainly, his trademarks by this point - bright but calm aesthetic, minimal editing and camera movements, an absolute lack of a musical score - is digestible here alongside the episode nature of the film, but it allows him instead to focus on keeping the viewer on their toes with these ideas and absurdities. The humour's still incredibly dry, like one of Bunuel's beloved martinis, but openly it's both one of his darkest but funniest films as a result.

Abstract Spectrum: Surrealism/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

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The Cinema of the Abstract Class 2018-19 [Part 2]

 For the beginning of this end of blog year retrospective, follow the link HERE.

Best Acting Performance(s) for Women:

Honourable Mentions:

d. Occidental (2017): You cannot talk about Neil Beloufa's film without mentioning Françoise Cousin in her canary yellow jumper and Anna Ivacheff as the paranoia (but strong minded) hotel manager. They work with the male cast as a perfect team of performers together.

c. Flexing With Monty (1994/2010): Actress and stage performer Sally Kirkland exposed herself literally and figuratively, as a nun who enters halfway through this film to divide the central brothers, and she jumps to the occasion appropriate for such a bizarre film.

b. Gdgd Fairies (2011-13): Voice acting is an underappreciated art, seen sometimes at its best in Japanese anime in comedy. For actresses Kaoru Mizuhara, Satomi Akesaka and Suzuko Mimori however, what in the first half of an episode is absurd sketch comedy about three fairies always turns into actual improvised skits for the second, where they had to literally have to improvise over what bizarre, cheap CGI artefacts they were seeing even if they flub over their words, start giggling or abruptly start singing. At one point Satomi Akesaka, who steals the improvisation scenes, actually says she's a disgrace to anime performing for screwing up her joke; she isn't, and the willingness to go into this silly comedy show, with Mizuhara and Mimori, should be something they should be proud of and the trio knock such absurd roles out the part.

a. John from Cincinnati (2007): Again, John from Cincinnati isn't for many, but the cast does their best and are memorable: Rebecca De Mornay chews scenery like a John Waters character, and in the one figure out of all the actresses who deserves to get on the list, the best character of the show and most inspired piece of non-professional actor casting comes from real life surfer Keala Kennelly who comes off as absolutely charming as the most sympathetic character.

5. The Wild Boys (2017): A lot of this list is a celebration of ensembles of actresses who all bring great performances by themselves but are even better together. Bertrand Mandico's The Wild Boys is a great example, as part of the film's gender fluid transgressions, because the main cast (Vimala Pons, Mathilde Warnier, Diane Rouxel, Pauline Lorillard and Anael Snoek) are all playing characters original young Sadean male youths who only turn into women when we get introduced to the island of phallic plants and hairy sexually suggestive fruit. They themselves are excellent, but I haven't even mentioned Elina Lowensohn striding the flora in full white suit and hat like the Dr. Livingstone figure of most viewers' fantasies.

4. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972): Again, Bunuel's most surreal films tend to be more about their style which just happened, in his final French work, had the best casts he could get.  But let's not kid ourselves, when you cast Delphine Seyrig, Bulle Ogier and Stéphane Audran you can even make vain and awful Bourgeoisie characters strangely sympathetic for all their flaws, thus showing why you cast such great actresses back in the sixties and seventies.

3. 3 Women (1977): Three women...Janice Rule in a virtually dialogue-less role still great, but this is definitely a film where you introduce Shelley Duvall to Sissy Spacek and everything in Robert Altman's film, literally created from a dream, turns into platinum.

2. Happy Hour (2015): Built from a workshop with director-writer Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, Happy Hour stands and falls because of its four actresses - Sachie Tanaka, Hazuki Kikuchi, Maiko Mihara and Rira Kawamura - who are central, even when one character disappears, to engaging you with the entire work. They exceed exponentially.

1. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975): One actress, the legendary Delphine Seyrig, commands the entire three plus hours with even a single mistake in stitching causing one to feel fear.

Best Director:

Honourable Mentions:

d. Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991): Alongside being an absolute innovator who is underappreciated - creating both one of the first actual websites on the internet with this film's hypertext version AND streaming the feature online decades before Netflix was even a thing - David Blair's barrage of psycho-surreal digital images is something to behold and admire.

Happy Hour (2015): On a list that wasn't this crammed with directors who deserved to be in similar positions, Ryusuke Hamaguchi's magnum opus in which he takes five and a half hours to create an intimate and quiet drama, and succeeds, would've shot him to Number 1. But, whilst he's mentioned, Hamaguchi deserves applause for this achievement.

c. The Territory (1981)/Régime sans pain (1985): Raul Ruiz is going to become a regular on the blog, (if his work ever got easier to find), but even for a man known for his truly unique filmography the eighties was the decade of his most insanely prolific and oddest work, especially as Ruiz had no qualms with working in cinema, television, dance films, shorts and whatever ephemera he could burn his imagination on and never drain his creativity through. No one else can claim, within just four years alongside other films, to switch from a horror farce where American tourists get stuck in the woods and have to resort to cannibalism, that had Wim Wenders film his own movie in the midst of its protracted shoot, to what was originally a music video for cult French musicians Angèle/Maimone that turned into a bizarre and brilliant musical dystopian sci-fi about a brain wiped king having to go back into competition to become king again. Ruiz's filmography before his death in 2011 was over a hundred films, so two curiosities that would be the strangest and best in another director's work were probably another day at work for him.

b. Let the Corpses Tan (2017): Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani are still going strong with this genre jump to crime cinema, turning it inside out as they did with giallo.

a. Boro in the Box/Living Still Life/The Wild Boys (2011/2012/2017): Since being introduced to Bertrand Mandico through MUBI, he's immediately become a director to watch for these phantasmagoric and incredible films. Shame his work is not easy to see in Britain beyond that small window, but what I got through MUBI were glorious.  

5. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972): Luis Bunuel's most well known film is great; what you don't realise, however, until revisiting it again is how quickly the film was put together, how effortlessly he made it, and how he and Jean-Claude Carrière made something legitimately subversive and funny from what was improvised material between them.

4. The Wolf House (2018): It feels like Cristóbal León and Joaquin Cociña put their blood, sweat and tears into making this fake propaganda animation, inspired by the real life horrors of Paul Schäfer's Chilean sectarian community that was able to get away with horrifying acts under a dictatorship, and their hard work is absolutely successful as a metaphor without ever explicitly detailing this. Even if you didn't have this historical context, it's not a film you forget easily.

3. 3 Women (1977): Only in the seventies would 20th Century Fox fund a film entirely based on a dream the director had. Thankfully, said director was Robert Altman, a man who could turn in a subdued and truly weird psychodrama from this origin.

2. Night is Short, Walk on Girl (2017): Because Masaaki Yuasa is Godlike and now has thankfully gotten so much attention he's never going to be out of work for a while now.

1. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975): Chantal Akerman's cinema here is daunting but felt fully, something impossible not to take as merely a subdued, primal scream in slow burn form. Anyone else at this position would've been an insult.

Best TV Project (Abstract or Not):

Honourable Mentions:

b. The TV Wheel (1995): Mystery Science Theater 3000 creator Joel Hodgson never got this curious sketch comedy premise beyond a pilot, a live show where a who's who of future comedy stars and writers have to perform live on a giant rotating stage, but the experiment (puppet uprising and all) is worth witnessing as a valiant failure.

a. Darknet (2013-4): Vincenzo Natali tried to refresh the horror anthology series by remaking a Japanese one; sadly, he only got six episodes, and stumbled badly for the whole of the fifth, but playing on the CreepyPasta and urban myth crazes did produce some inspired results.

5. TerrorVision (198X): Not "great", frankly how this micro-series shot on VHS and with the most limited of resources ever got made is a question worth raising, but that's just as much part of the fun as its absurdly cheap horror storytelling.

4. Tokyo Vampire Hotel (2017): Sion Sono wins me back, especially after the experiment pinku failure Antiporno (2016), by using Amazon Prime money to go to Transylvania and spill comical amounts of fake blood everywhere.

3. Gdgd Fairies (2011-13): On the surface, this just looks like a series of ironic and cheap gags just about its cheap CGI animation. After two seasons, you realise the usually confused three voice actresses and the production loved creating the strangest and funniest jokes about three fairies bumming around their magic kingdom as much as you do watching it. Even when a major collaborator left after the first season, the second got so much more ambitious and ridiculous it was practically bulletproof.

2. John from Cincinnati (2007): The ill advised attempt at Deadwood creator David Milch to create a spiritual and weird cult surfing series is an acquired taste but, hell, I enjoyed it. I realise why many could see it as one of the worst series of that decade (the 2000s) but we still talk about this series to this day because it was truly unique for better and worse.

1. Boogiepop Phantom (2000): Much more difficult to understand as the sequel to a live action adaptation, but still a true one-off, a strange and mesmerising horror sci-fi story which (barring one detail or so) makes you earn the ability to understand what the hell's going on with great aesthetic style and script writing. Everything from a lounge ballad of all (inspired) choices over the opening credits to its nerve wracking noise electronic score is perfect.

Best Non-Abstract (The Oddities, Obscurities and One-Offs Award):

As of now, these reviews will be called the Oddities, Obscurities and One-Offs, so let us transition from "Non-Abstract" to this new title in a respect passing of the torch...

Honourable Mentions:

c. Darknet (2013-4): An imperfect but bold Canadian horror anthology from Vincenzo Natali, playing with myths about technology and insanely non-chronological narrative structures; I wished it'd least have more than six episodes and not ended on that dumb final scene twist, but it was innovative in turning clichés into some unique shocks.

b. Intruders (1992): An alien abduction mini-series for CBS which is cheesy at points, marred by an attempt to soften itself that leaves a bad taste, an ending inappropriate for a dark story of women being abducted by aliens, but the final work is still a compelling. At three hour, the greatest virtue of this work is how it tries to add psychological complexity to this well worn paranormal topic, bringing actual fear to the material whilst adding greater emotional resonance.

a. Welcome to Marwen (2018): A somewhat troubling, sometimes unintentionally dark take on artist Mark Hogancamp, sometimes deliberately weird and ridiculous too, but considering the director of the Back to the Future films could've just spent the rest of his career making dull motion capture films, better this flawed oddity came to be instead where he took on this challenging material.

5. Year of the Nail (2007): Not a fan of Alfonso Cuarón, but his son Jonas' debut composed of photographs put together into a narrative a la La Jetee (1962) is worthy of rediscovery.

4. Occidental (2017): Sadly a film that's going to be difficult to see again, but Neil Beloufa's neon and synth soaked black comedy of mistaking identity of paranoia in a hotel in the midst of a street protest hit all the right notes.

3. Tokyo Vampire Hotel (2017): My love/hate relationship with post-2010s Sion Sono was softened by this ultra-gory but playful Amazon Prime mini-series. The clichéd shocks of his other recent work is here, but something about a longer length to play with brought back his much missed eccentricity too.

2. Cry Baby Lane (2000): Wasn't this TV movie pulled off Nickelodeon because it was too frightening for children? Probably not, but the CreepyPasta and urban myth helped the likes of me see this strange Goosebumps-like horror story worthy of a proper rediscovery, which is far more interesting in terms of its actual weird subtexts on adolescent sexuality and growing pains, the theme score turning into a Cramps riff and Frank Langella making the best Tom Waits replacement for a useless but lovable undertaker.

1. Happy Hour (2015): Over five and a half hours, a drama which justifies this length because like the best of novels, its tale of four Japanese women over thirty and their various stories are expanded and layered to the point that you are fully immersed into their work.

Best Abstract Film:

Honourable Mentions:

e. Régime sans pain (1985): Beats out The Territory from Raul Ruiz because I wasn't expecting a sci-fi film which states stealing a jacket from a dying man in a burning car is required to qualify into the semi-finals of becoming king of an entire nation.

d. Let the Corpses Tan (2017): Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani return with a much needed transition into new material without needing to leave their original and still innovative mix of genre and avant-garde.

c. Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991): Bees, living missiles escaping off to the moon, being your own grandfather, and I can list more from there to adore.

b. 3 Women (1977): Robert Altman makes a film of changing identities without anything stranger than just one dream sequence and the entire tone of everything else just being off.

a. Alipato: The Very Brief Life of an Ember (2016): Khavn's profane, tragic, sickly funny and at times just sick explosion of rage about child criminals eventually forced as adults back into more violence.

5. Boro in the Box/Living Still Life/ The Wild Boys (2011/2012/2017): Bertrand Mandico enters my life, making a completely unsanctioned biography of Walerian Borowczyk he'd be proud of, a morbid yet perversely beautiful short about film literally animating the dead, and a gender-fluid boy's (girl's) own adventure and thus wins my heart.

4. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972): Bunuel's Oscar winning farce about the middle class being unable to have a dinner party has finally won me over after not seeing each other for a long, long time. Befitting that sentence sounds like one of the many dreams recounted by characters within this same film about encountering dead friends.

3. The Wolf House (2018): A legitimately uncomfortable, but artistically masterful, subversion of Chile's dark history by way of a propaganda animation made from one's own nightmares.

2. Night is Short, Walk On Girl (2017): Masaaki Yuasa returns to the world of The Tatami Galaxy (2010), a wonderful animated series back when he was merely a cult figure barely accessible in the West, to follow another character in the world with the energy and creativity of a man whose touch for many (even Adventure Time fans) turns any animated production to gold.

1. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975): At first possibly a bizarre choice for a blog about "abstract" films until you actually watch this seminal seventies work, in which three plus hours of domestic stagnation play in slow time over a period of three days forces the viewer into a stupor before everything breaks in a sudden violence at the end. That if anything is truly, absolute, what abstract cinema is defined as for me, rejecting representation of external "cinematic" reality in mainstream cinema and forcing one to experience it in an entirely different way. I usually define this attitude from the most unrealistic or surreal of techniques, but this film, a monolith in feminist cinema, proved you can reach this same goal through unbearable realism.

The Abstract Hall of Fame (Class of 2018-19)

I felt that, in lieu to Cinema of the Abstract as a blog being a passion project entirely for myself I want to treat as seriously as possible, recognising the figures responsible for this type of cinema felt necessary. So, hopefully for the first of these, may I present the first nominees for recognition for these great creations I have watched over the years, be they director, actor, writer, even (hopefully in the future) other individuals in underappreciated roles in creating this work. This is a toast for them with sadly no promise of an actual award unless I somehow become successful for this blog...

Lucio Fulci

I haven't covered a film from Fulci this year, (though in June 2018 I did cover the truly weird later film Touch of Death (1988) which was just out over the cut-off point), but the legendary Italian director is a name to remember in terms of his deliberately surreal and unconventional genre films which I have covered a lot of, with many left to tackle. Not just a horror director, who was actually incredibly diverse in his genres of choice up to the mid-eighties, but even his iconic and notorious splatter horror films are unlike anyone else's, strange and deliberately obfuscating logic deliberately.

Elina Löwensohn

Over ten years ago in university, who were legally allowed to keep TV recordings of television and films for educational purposes, I saw Löwensohn for the first time in Nadja (1994), Michael Almereyda's idiosyncratic take on the vampire film which is worthy of coverage here. I didn't expect over a decade later for Elina Löwensohn to reappear and with as much reoccurrence as it did, now a muse for unconventional and unique European filmmakers who skirt genre and transgression like Bertrand Mandico to Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Whether striding the jungle in white suit and pure swagger, or playing the one person Greek chorus of an artist shooting holes in her paintings, Löwensohn from her striking appearance to her clear ease in even very explicit scenes in films like Boro in a Box (2011) to The Wild Boys (2017) is absolutely magnetic onscreen, an incredible figure who lives up to the notion that you can have a healthy career in this territory of cinema as she seems to be having now. Considering how she started back with films like Nadja, this slowly growing career reassurance, at least in public consciousness for cult and art film fans, should hopefully reward her in the end.

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani

A life couple and a strong duo, the release of Let the Corpses Tan proved that, thankfully, Cattet and Forzani weren't a one trick pony. They are the best working directing duo barring the Coens (no joke) as they at least provide something truly unique, a sense driven experience each time you watch one of their films. Leather gloves and fetishism were never the same when they came into cinema.

Bertrand Mandico

Somewhat of a risk as I have only known of the French director's existence since 2018, and he could drop the ball if a worst case scenario happens, but its notable that his debut, mini-feature Boro in a Box, was not only incredible but only from 2011, meaning that he is a new figure and one that, if he keeps progressing through shorts and a successful debut theatrical length film (The Wild Boys), is going to make great waves for the better.

Now roll on the 2019-2020 year...