Les Astronautes

(Walerian Borowczyk & Chris Marker/1959/France)

A short surrealist animation about invention and space travel that hints at wider political and philosophical concerns. The credits are sound tracked in a musical jewellery box style that dissolves into futuristic synth washes and whooshes presaging the science fiction to come. We are introduced to a house with knocking and clanging industrial sounds before a man and his owl are seen. He is working on a myriad of calculations and labours which produce a spaceship. The designs of most of its parts are sourced from the natural world. After checking the position of the moon he and the owl set off on a maiden voyage. This involves peeping on a beautiful neighbour through her window, a flyby of some officious person in an open top car, blowing his top hat off and then coming out of a printer’s front door before a daring manoeuvre through the Arch of Titus (identified by the inscription on it). Next the craft is seen following a rocket up into space, cutting the moon in half and then landing on it. From here there is a series of interactions with a giant man in space and a small red arrow shaped ship with the letters SPA on the side. The red SPA ship and the earlier rocket are in battle, shooting at each other. After a few altercations the man’s spaceship is destroyed and he falls to earth where his spirit rises up to an empty cloud. He is surrounded by many other clouds with identical incarnations of his spirit suggesting the escapade in space is some form of Sisyphean loop of existence.

There are many little hints at wider meanings and inspirations. The engine of the spaceship is called Axolotl which I would agree with David Surman could reference Julio Cortázar’s 1952 short story about the psychic transmutation of a man into the body of a salamander. This infers a deeper link between man and machine. An axolotl can also regenerate limbs which might link to the final imagery of numerous incarnations of the space pilot in the final scene. Outside of that the imagery of the owl and the moon are obvious references to classical Greek and Roman culture, the owl being Athena, goddess of wisdom and war and the moon suggests Diane, Roman goddess of hunting who can also reflect the heavens. So we have a clever inventor (wisdom) seeking new experience (hunting) in space using the moon as his guide (the heavens) and getting involved in a battle (war). The battle between the American looking rocket and the soviet looking SPA red arrow must be a nod to the cold war space race that kick started the year before in 1958. The Arch of Titus is a Roman monument built to celebrate Titus’ military victories, especially the Siege of Jerusalem. It became the template for many other arches including the L’Arc de Triomphe. Borowyczyk was a Polish Jew living in Paris at the time of making of Les Astronautes.

 

As it’s a short, surreal and slightly absurdist film delivered with a sense of whimsical humour it would be over reaching to try and pin point direct meanings or explicit statements in the piece. It is fun though to take the various visual references and attempt to decipher the thinking, conscious or otherwise, of the film makers when creating it.

 
(3.5/5)

Spring Breakers

(Harmony Korine/2012/USA)

You know those young, gaudy, reckless American hedonist students that spend their Easter holidays in an alcohol and drug binged haze of moronic hollering and casual sex? Harmony Korine made a film about those idiots but couldn’t sustain the narrative long enough before having to weld it to some bullshit about white gangster rappers. The whole film is an exercise in glitzy surface cool in an effort to make some sub textual comment on American youth culture but it gets tired and tiring very, very quickly. Outside of Kids, which he wrote and is brilliant, I haven’t seen any other Harmony Korine films but am aware he’s lauded in various circles. If this is what he’s amounted to in the near 20 years since writing Kids I won’t be rushing to fill in the gaps.

(0/5)  

The Missouri Breaks

(Arthur Penn/1976/USA)

Part screwball comedy, part counter culture free love romance and part revenge tale, but all western, The Missouri Breaks comes under the heading of mid 70’s cinematic curiosity and is often overlooked. Starring Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson it packs a mighty punch of idiosyncratic acting that adds to its charm as a result. Nicholson exudes his quirked, smiling rogue shtick as Tom Logan but you’d be forgiven for thinking he plays things straight in comparison to the calculated eccentricities of Brando’s Lee Clayton character. Entering the film like a wild west jester with an atrociously put on Irish accent the wild, farcical elements are slowly pared away, even the accent, as Clayton moves closer and closer to being the assassin he’s hired to be. It’s hugely enjoyable and just one element in this hot pot of a film that also boasts a supporting cast of Randy Quaid and Harry Dean Stanton. Kathleen Lloyd is excellent as a foil to Nicholson in the romantic sub plot too, my first time seeing her onscreen. Special mention has to go for John Williams score though, it is a fantastic mesh of American folk and bluegrass with what can only be described as 70’s funk synth and at times veers towards free jazz noodlings but all in a hillbilly twanged vibe. Well worth a watch and contains one of the best lines ever delivered in a film:

Logan: It’s the way it happens, isn’t it, Cal?

Cal: I wouldn’t know, not since that dog of mine put his tongue on the butter.

(3.5/5)